Root Song World Premiere I

About This Performance Premiering at Bartram’s Garden, Root Song blends live vocal chamber music by Roomful of Teeth with storytelling by Tchin, creating an immersive experience that channels the wisdom of our forests. Inspired by ground-breaking research on mycorrhizal networks connecting trees and rooted in Indigenous Knowledge, Root Song prompts reflection on the mysteries of our interconnected natural world. Directed by Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil, the work is composed by Christopher Theofanidis with a libretto by Melissa Studdard. The Artist(s) Roomful of Teeth Roomful of Teeth is a Grammy-winning vocal band dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. By engaging collaboratively with artists, thinkers, and community leaders from around the world, the group seeks to uplift and amplify voices old and new while creating and performing meaningful and adventurous music. Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells,… Read More × Artist’s website Roomful of Teeth Roomful of Teeth is a Grammy-winning vocal band dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. By engaging collaboratively with artists, thinkers, and community leaders from around the world, the group seeks to uplift and amplify voices old and new while creating and performing meaningful and adventurous music. Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, the band was incubated at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, where members studied with some of the world’s most extraordinary singers and teachers. Through experimentation, exploration, and plenty of failures, the group learned that the boundaries of the human voice are never what they seem, that rules can be bent, even broken, and perhaps they should be. Through their unique collaborative process, Roomful of Teeth has worked with many of today’s most compelling musical creators to build a significant and continuously growing repertoire. They have collaborated with a wide range of artists and ensembles spanning genres and art forms. As the world rapidly changes, Roomful of Teeth is cultivating deeper relationships with technology, continuing to explore and expand the artistic reach of the human voice. They are excited about new collaborative projects focused on stories of place, home, and community in diverse environments around the world. They explore, learn, and collaborate with passionate curiosity, contagious enthusiasm, and deep gratitude. Tchin, storyteller “Many times people ask me, how did I get started as a storyteller. Native American people, we grow up basically as that. We grow up hearing stories all the time. But we don’t call them stories, legends or myths. To us, they are lessons, because they explain the universe.” Tchin (pronounced ‘chin) learned many of his lessons from Princess Red Wing,… Read More × Artist’s website Tchin, storyteller “Many times people ask me, how did I get started as a storyteller. Native American people, we grow up basically as that. We grow up hearing stories all the time. But we don’t call them stories, legends or myths. To us, they are lessons, because they explain the universe.” Tchin (pronounced ‘chin) learned many of his lessons from Princess Red Wing, a famous Narragansett woman who traveled the world telling traditional tales. He is also an avid researcher and many times is given the gift of lessons from other storytellers. To enrich his own cultural knowledge, he also studies folklore from around the world. “I’m studying quite a bit about the Mideast at this time. I’ve studied ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and what you get out of all that is that you get to understand people more clearly…How the universe makes sense to them…it allows you to understand your universe that much better.” Tchin was born in Norfolk, Virginia and was raised by his extended family. As a child, he attended segregated schools in rural Virginia, and was grouped with people of color. He also spent time with relatives in Rhode Island, learning more about his Narragansett culture. Ironically, the Narragansett tribe did not have a reservation at that time, and were not recognized as a tribe by the U.S. government. When he was 15, Tchin moved to New York City by himself. Too young to get a job, he worked for food and created Native jewelry, flutes, moccasins, and clothing. After ten years in New York, he was accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He studied at RISD, Brown University and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from RISD, Tchin lived and worked in New York City, raising four daughters with his wife, Woo. Today, Tchin is an internationally known, multi-award winning metalsmith, author, flutemaker, educator, folklorist and musician. He has performed at institutions from local schools to prestigious museums such as the Museum of Natural History, Peabody Museum, and The Museum of Man. Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil, creative director Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil is a director, creative producer, singing actor, educator, and wild blueberry picker rooted in the beautiful and artistically fertile Monadnock region of New Hampshire, the ancestral homelands of the Wabanaki. Her work focuses on how live performance can be a stitch in the great reweaving of humanity back into reciprocal kinship with the rest of life on this good,… Read More × Artist’s website Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil, creative director Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil is a director, creative producer, singing actor, educator, and wild blueberry picker rooted in the beautiful and artistically fertile Monadnock region of New Hampshire, the ancestral homelands of the Wabanaki. Her work focuses on how live performance can be a stitch in the great reweaving of humanity back into reciprocal kinship with the rest of life on this good, green Earth. Jazimina has conceived, directed, and performed in a number of interdisciplinary works which explore the intersection of music, storytelling, and the natural world: Danika the Rose, an interplay of Dvorak’s sublime Moravian Duets with an original eco-fairytale written by Jazimina in collaboration with master storyteller Odds Bodkin, and an orchestral version of this project, Love Like Water, produced in collaboration with conductor Eric Jacobsen and composer Lembit Beecher. In collaboration with the Harris Center for Conservation Education and Electric Earth Concerts, Jazimina created two site-specific musical hikes: The Singing Stream, which sets Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin alongside a real-life mill stream, and In Fine Feather, which invites walkers into a world of music and poetry inspired by birdsong, accompanied by the sights and sounds of the birds themselves. She has also collaborated with the DreamYard Project and Brooklyn Art Song Society to create Frozen Tears, a concert of artwork and spoken word inspired by the alienation in Schubert’s Winterreise as it resonates with young artivists from the South Bronx. Currently in development is Root Song, a collaboration with Grammy-award winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth which interweaves live vocal chamber music and storytelling to create an embodied experience of listening to the wisdom of trees. Inspired by recent scientific inquiries into plant sentience and mycorrhizal networks, whose findings resonate with Traditional Ecological Knowledge acquired by Indigenous cultures over millennia, Root Song asks the question: how can the deep listening of a musical and storytelling experience invite us to once again hear the voices of the more-than-human world, starting with trees? Jazimina is a company member of the award-winning Firelight Theatre Workshop, with whom she regularly performs and devises immersive, experimental, and community-based works.She also spends her time conducting worm races and acorn forensics as a teacher-naturalist at the Harris Center for Education Conservation, as well as concocting