A Homegoing (2025)
i. a welcome warning
ii. nature witnessed
iii. the road to reflection
iv. the brackish heart
A Homegoing, Kelly Taylor Mitchell
Handmade paper: overbeaten flax, Great Dismal Swamp bald cypress and milkweed fibers for blowouts, base sheets and pulp painting. Tassels, passed down textiles, image transfers and raffia inclusions. Found bricks and swamp water
Music by Chelsea Loew | Art by Kelly Taylor Mitchell
Duration 20'
Instrumentation flute, violin, cello, live electronics
Commissioned by Ensemble Vim for Spark Festival
Premiered February 2025, Museum of Contemporary Art: Atlanta, GA — Ensemble Vim
Program Note Three days in the Great Dismal Swamp and well-spent conversations about the complexities of the land and its history with artist Kelly Taylor Mitchell led to A Homegoing. So much has been asked of this place. It has witnessed so much beauty, atrocity, love, pain, nature, industrialization, life, death, slavery, freedom. Mad-made rigid, straight trails pass through miles of untouched nature. In one direction, a sign says Welcome to the Great Dismal Swamp and in the other, Danger: Keep Out. On the perimeters of the land, you yearn and search for water. In the center of the swamp, down a endless gravel road, lies the vast and ample Lake Drummond, whose origin remains untold. The peat-stained water appears dirty, though in reality is clean and pure. Near the reflection pier, melodies of Odetta Holmes and words of Bob Dylan are carried away with the wind and the waves.
"Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind"
Ensemble Vim, Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia
Interview with artist Kelly Mitchell Taylor and composer Chelsea Loew about their collaborative work A Homegoing
“I was particularly struck by the composer’s ability to use so few musical elements to forge so many satisfying textures and phrases. The musical language encompassing the very listenable sonic materials was quite successfully and skillfully brought up to date, fit for 21st-century audiences. The entire piece held one’s attention marvelously throughout!”