“Stillness Variations”: New Release!

Stillness Variations is a collection of 8 modern pieces for piano and viola with Mimi Rabson.

Listen to an excerpt from Stillness Variation 3:

Composed originally for solo piano, Stillness Variations was born of a fascination I had with crossing my hands over and under one another to play. I became absorbed in the harmonies and unexpected rhythms that were created.

Stillness Variations is also now being released for solo piano.

Listen to an excerpt from Stillness Variation 3 for piano:

Throughout the writing process, I experimented with content and form. In playing with my hands crossed over one another, I also became painfully aware of the loss of my own identity suffered in relationship to my mother. Thus, Stillness Variation 5, for example, realizes my first deconstruction in composition — subtracting the last note of every measure. Stillness Variation 6 (House of Georgie Chains) was the last to be written and the most exploratory.

Immersed in these discoveries and inspired by the spaciousness in Feldman, Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” and minimalism, both Stillness Variations and Aberfan would be born.

Stillness Variations for piano premiered November 2013 at All Souls Mid-Week Music in Greenfield, MA.

“Your music is very paradoxical… there’s an intelligence about it that’s informed from an interior place which creates true originality and I’m using that word in its true meaning, “emerging from the origin, the source”. This duality of a simplicity and a uniqueness is very refreshing.” Joseph Marcello, Greenfield Recorder, October 31, 2013 “Humility & Conviction”

Recorded and mixed by Jay Hovnanian.

Au Sable Chasm, New York (Acknowledgement of the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank at the University of Washington Libraries as a source for borrowed images is requested. Materials are in the public domain. No copyright permissions are needed.)

Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue)

Elegy for Aberfan. Contemporary world music. Composer Laura Siersema. (Studio recording in process.)

On October 21, 1966, in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales, a man-made mountain of coal waste catastrophically collapsed on a primary school and nearby houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

The National Coal Board was found to be entirely responsible for failing to act to prevent the disaster. Reading about this tragedy in the newspaper at the time had such a profound effect on my Mom that she wrote a folk song. Memory of this song, deeply embedded, has compelled me to create Aberfan. Fragments of her lyrics and melody have become a part of my composition.

Through composed in a rotating pattern of musical sections, “Rain”, “Interlude”, “Rock” and “Hymn”, Aberfan is at times full of unsettling, discordant sound as if being subsumed in an avalanche of slag and at other times nearly silent. A tender voice juxtaposed with disjointed piano rhythms. Sounds of steel shovels, picks and hatchets erupt unpredictably through languid chords of a funereal hymn.

Music of Aberfan will be presented online with contemporaneous moving and still imagery — a confined, immersive space unfolding with historical text, archival footage and black and white photographs.

“Their daily rendition [in morning assembly, 9am] of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ – a hymn written a few miles away in the bucolic tranquility of the Usk Valley – was postponed that day. They would sing it before they went home when the head teacher planned to wish her pupils a safe and enjoyable holiday.” (Aberfan: A Mistake that Cost a Village its Children by Ceri Jackson, BBC News, October 21, 2016) The catastrophic collapse occurred about 9:15am.

Aerial view, October 21, 1966, courtesy of AGU Blogosphere

Aberfan is an expression of the collective unconscious of our time. A psychological and spiritual rendering as much as a musical one, it is an excavation into my own soul. Propelling itself through time, Aberfan is the story of power and destruction wrought over all the world in the willful, negligent and unconscious devastation upon what is most vulnerable in ourselves and in others, and the practice of transforming what cannot be fathomed through my music.

In the greed of our global imperial, capitalist systems, we are destroying ourselves, the Earth and every living thing.

I am seeking support for the experimental media design of an online presentation, combining the music of Aberfan with contemporaneous still and moving imagery.

DONATE

COLLABORATOR: Michael Farquharson Studio Producer / Engineer, Boston, MA

PHOTOGRAPHS

PRESS

RADIO INTERVIEW “I see [Aberfan] as the epitome of the folk process, because folk music, in all its definitions, is about stories.” (Nick Noble, WICN)

Aberfan is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions on behalf of Aberfan must be made payable to NYFA, and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. All donations will be acknowledged on my website and project page unless requested kept private.

If sending a check, please make payable to NYFA & mail to:

New York Foundation for the Arts
c/o Fiscal Sponsorship
29 West 38th Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10018

Aberfan is funded in part by Puffin Foundation, Thendara Foundation, Puffin Foundation West, Deupree Family Foundation, M. S. Worthington Foundation and The Cricket Foundation.

“…Continuing the dialogue between art and the lives of ordinary people.”

The Cricket Foundation

Stillness Variation 7

Originally Stillness Variations were written for solo piano. Listen to a preview of Stillness Variation 7:

But over a year ago, I began the process of recording the Variations for release with viola. Listen to a preview with Mimi Rabson on viola. Her improvisation is just wonderful.

You can stream them all at Spotify

CEASEFIRE NOW

Demand we stop funding this war.

On Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Dangerous Conflations

“Aberfan was a man-made disaster…we must remember this”

On this 57th anniversary, I am reposting this powerful story by Huw Edwards:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/aberfan-was-a-man-made-disaster-50-years-on-we-must-remember-thi/

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. She continues to work towards completion of its recording.

Aberfan Disaster: Meet Detective Sargeant Charles Nunn, Welsh Regional Crime Squad, 1966

144 people — including 116 children — were killed when 150,000 tons of coal waste catastrophically collapsed on a school and houses in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales on October 21, 1966.

Over a year ago, Charles Nunn contacted me, offering help for my project, Aberfan.

Here is the story he wrote in 1987. TheDisasterOfAberfan_CharlesNunn_ThePoliceReview_

From one of our email exchanges, his words: “The team in the mortuary were composed entirely of Regional Crime Squad Officers drawn from all over Wales….We were tasked to set up a mortuary, and identify the 144 victims of the disaster. I was designated the Senior Identification Officer and worked with my team in the mortuary at Bethania Chapel in Moy Road, Aberfan for 15 days until the last body, and body piece, was identified.

Aberfan was a small village. No police station, no town hall, no gymnasium which was why we had to use the totally inadequate facilities of the Sunday school room at the rear of the chapel for receiving, washing the bodies etc. and the body of the chapel itself to place the bodies for viewing. Once a body had been identified and the cause of death recorded by a pathologist, without exception asphyxiation and multiple crush injuries, Death Certificates needed to be issued.

It now sounds very incongruous and bizarre but they were issued from a local land mark, the village fish and chip shop.

In my handwriting, a notice was placed on the door of the chapel directing families to that location.”

I am deeply grateful for all that he has passed on to me.

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. She continues to work towards the completion of its recording.

(Originally posted November 2015.)

Aberfan Disaster: 57th Anniversary 10.21.23 “…the greed of man”

A Tribunal investigating the 1966 events found that the National Coal Board was entirely responsible for failing to act to prevent the disaster, though they were never prosecuted.

Sophie-Ann Williams of North Wales provided the photo below of her Grandfather, the late Reverend Colin Peter Bessant. He was helping to dig out after the Aberfan Disaster. Paula Bessant Williams, Sophie’s mother, said, “My Dad never spoke about it without getting really upset. Just said it was the greed of man…”

“…and yet…the innocent are those who get punished most zealously of all. And what would one then have to say about our so evident torturers: Why does not fate punish them? Why do they prosper?

And the only solution to this would be that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but …in the development of the soul. From that point of view our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine, they are departing downward from humanity…”

“The Ascent” from The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

(Originally posted February 2018)

ABERFAN: 56TH ANNIVERSARY 10.21.22

On October 21, 1966, in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales, a man-made mountain of coal waste collapsed on a primary school and nearby houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

Aberfan: The mistake that cost a village its children

By Ceri Jackson, BBC News

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization.

Image courtesy South Wales Police Museum, 1966

Aberfan: 55th Anniversary 10.21.21

On October 21, 1966, in the small mining village of Aberfan, Wales, a man-made mountain of coal waste collapsed on a primary school and nearby houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible and ensure completion of its recording in the studio.

The Cricket Foundation Awards “Aberfan” composition

Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue) has been awarded $5,000 from The Cricket Foundation of Seattle, Washington to support its recording at Mix One Studios in Boston.

On October 21st, in the small mining village of Aberfan, a man-made mountain of coal waste collapsed on a primary school and nearby houses, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.

Anonymous Grant Goes to “Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue)”

“My unpublished works cried out that they wanted to live.” (The Oak and the Calf: A Memoir, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

This past month, I received word that Aberfan would be awarded a grant, enough to go back into the studio and continue recording. Been a long time. I wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise. A tremendous gift, tangible and intangible.

Courtesy South Wales Police Museum Aberfan, 1966, Pantglas Junior School

Aberfan is an expression of the collective unconscious of our time. A psychological and spiritual rendering as much as a musical one, it is an excavation into my own soul. Propelling itself through me, Aberfan is the story of power and destruction wrought over all the world in the willful, negligent and unconscious devastation upon what is most vulnerable in ourselves and in others, and the practice of transforming what cannot be fathomed through my music.

Laura Siersema is composer of Aberfan (7 pianos, voice and tools of rescue), a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible. Your contribution ensures we can return to the studio to complete its recording.