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This program explores journeying and homecoming of two kinds: the roads we travel in the wide world, and the roads we travel inward.

I am both soprano and writer, of personal essay, poetic prose, and memoir. I have always been drawn to the magic of memoir and what it demands of the artist. When you read a memoir, you don't read the writer's story; you read your own story. What a writer must do is journey away from their own relationship to their story and toward the universal. Borrowing the wisdom of poet William Stafford: "no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive, we must find something forgotten by everyone alive."

I am deeply interested in exploring this technique as a vocalist. "Home: A Story of Great Distances" taps in to the audiences’ wandering heart, bringing them along an adventure, the universal journey, dressed in the costume of my own adventures in solo world travel.

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video by Shelby Coley, directed by Vanessa Aldrich. 2024.

The first half of the concert invites audiences to Spain, the place that became my first home away from home, and where I began my career as an expert solo wanderer. Through the works of 19th-century composers like Augustín Lara, Fernando Obradors, Manuel de Falla, and others, audiences are reminded of the magic of traveling through our wide world: learning new cultures, finding new love, living the new experiences that allow us to build new homes.

While many associate Spanish and Latin American culture with the 19th century's peak of exoticism, our program pushes against this tendency and explores souvenirs of unlikely temporal landscapes. Surveying Spanish Baroque and Renaissance periods, rarely-performed Andalusian music from the 13th century, and even referencing the region's prehistory, we'll explore how notions of "home" have shifted over time, and perhaps, how they haven't.

In stark contrast, mirroring the shocking discoveries of my own journey, the second half of the program is about the more spiritual, personal kind of journeying: seeking wisdom, belonging, meaning, reconciliation, and a home you will never find unless you go inward. To aid with this, I offer music in my native language and start us with music of Great Britain, the cradle of my deepest personal discoveries. Here, the audience experiences the sonorities of stunning vastness and the pastoral drum that demands supplication to mystery. In this section, we deal with existential considerations and the universal invitation to mine for meaning. If the first half is about belonging in the temporal sense, the second half of the program is about belonging to the eternal.

I also offer the spiritual, existential wisdom of those who have been torn from their homes, traveling great distances by force, for example, across the Atlantic. The major contribution of African-American music to the canon of classical repertory, for me, has always been the profound beauty and wisdom unearthed and created from suffering. Here I feature Black American composers, from Thelonious Monk to Negro Spirituals. which teach us that the [journey?] is within and is indistinguishable. The emotional centerpiece for the concert is the hauntingly tragic piece "Lord, How Come Me Here" for ensemble voices and soloist, made famous by Kathleen Battle as part of the Spirituals in Concert in Carnegie Hall (1990).

The recital closes with the b-side of one of the great modern romantic classical works, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a monument to coming-of-age, the loss of innocence, and belonging.

My hope with this program is to use universal wisdom to welcome new audiences into this beloved art form. My hope is that you will walk away from the performance feeling at home, feeling seen, and asking yourself, "Who is this Vanessa? And how did she know so much about me?"

The truth is that I do know you. And I want you to start your next day with that understanding because we are not, none of us are, alone.