POSTPONED - Brian Harnetty Residency
Due to the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Helene, we are postponing the Brian Harnetty residency in the hopes of rescheduling for a time where more people will have the opportunity to attend and appreciate this exciting visit. A new date will be announced and promoted in all of our usual outlets once determined. Below you can see a preview of what this visit is expected to entail.
POSTPONED: Brian Harnetty Residency
His recent project, Words and Silences, was among the top albums in The Wire Magazine, Mojo Magazine, Allmusic, and Aquarium Drunkard. Harnetty has also twice received 5/5 star reviews from Mojo, and twice received their “Underground Album of the Year.” Harnetty has earned many national awards, including the Creative Capital Award, the MAP Fund Award, and the A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art.
Harnetty lives in Columbus, Ohio. His first book, How to Perform an Archive, will be published with The University of North Carolina Press in the fall of 2025. https://www.brianharnetty.com/
Residency Schedule
New Date TBD:
Many Musics of America Talk: Re-Animating the Sound Archive (Schaffel, 6:00 Pm w/ Reception)
New Date TBD:
Thomas Merton: Words and Silences - Talk, Performance, Q/A (Rosen, 8:00 PM w/ Reception)
See below for details of the events!
Brian Harnetty's residency is proudly sponsored by:
Talk: Re-Animating the Sound Archive
New Date and Time TBD
Talk Location: Schaffel Recital Hall (Broyhill Music Center 126)
Reception Location: (TBD, following the event ~ 30 minutes)
- This event is made possible through sponsorship by the American Musicological Society as part of the "Many Musics of America" project.
- It is also part of the Music Humanities Community Conversations Series at Appalachian State University, which is sponsored by the Hayes School of Music and the Center for Appalachian Studies.
Re-Animating the Sound Archive:
Over the past two decades, Brian Harnetty has located historical recordings that document spoken words and musical performance in archives across Appalachia and the Midwest, including the Berea Appalachian Sound Archives (Berea, Kentucky), the Little Cities of Black Diamonds Archive (Shawnee, Ohio), and the Thomas Merton Collection (Louisville, Kentucky). In this talk, Harnetty will discuss strategies by which people in the present relate to recorded sounds that document the past. Through listening with people who live today in the communities where the recordings were made, Harnetty has helped these communities understand and respond to their histories. In this talk he explores themes from several recording, performance, and installation projects that embed old audio in new contexts, playing illustrative examples from historic and present-day audio and video recordings. These projects document histories of extraction in Appalachia, social and environmental justice concerns, and contemplative practices.
About the Series: This event is part of the Music Humanities Community Conversation Series, which provides a forum for students, faculty, and staff at Appalachian State University and community members to engage current topics in music humanities through invited talks and workshops given by scholars, artists, and cultural leaders from Appalachian State and the surrounding region.
- The events are free and open to the public.
- Attendees may park in the Schaefer Lot, Broyhill Lot, or Peacock Lot for free from 5:00pm to the end of the event. The Broyhill Music Center is at 813 Rivers St, Boone, NC, 28608.
- For more information, contact Dr. Jacob Kopcienski, via email at kopcienskija@appstate.edu or by phone at 828-262-7385.
Performance and Talk: Words and Silences
New Date and Time TBD
Please join us for “Words and Silences” in Rosen Concert Hall. The event will begin with Brian Harnetty in conversation with App State Faculty members Dr. Jacob Kopcienski (Hayes School of Music) and Dr. Cuong Mai (Philosophy and Religion) about Thomas Merton’s life and work, and Harnetty’s composition process. After Harnetty performs “Words and Silences” (~45 minutes), the panel will answer questions and discuss the performance with the audience.
This presentation and discussion of "Words and Silences" is sponsored by High Country Humanities and the Hayes School of Music.
Program Notes
Thomas Merton: Words and Silences
Words and Silences is a music portrait of the Cistercian monk and writer Thomas Merton (1915-68). It brings together newly composed music with archival recordings Merton made alone in his Kentucky hermitage between April 22 and December 31, 1967. These remarkable recordings are intimate, ranging from Merton’s thoughts on Samuel Beckett, to Sufi mystics, to the Louisville race protests, to Michel Foucault. Merton also managed to immediately use the tape recorder both as a contemplative tool and a medium for self-discovery.
The album often feels like a one-person play, with an exchange between Merton and the ensemble. There are also subtle references to the music Merton loved throughout his life, including folk songs, John Coltrane, Buck Owens, Louis Armstrong, and Jimmy Smith. Brass and wind instruments evoke the attentive breathing of meditation, and the piano shares distant echoes of Merton’s interest in early Kansas City Jazz and Boogie Woogie pianists, from Mary Lou Williams, to Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis.
Merton’s words still feel relevant today, both in terms of the solitude and reflection experienced during the pandemic, and of the demand for racial justice happening across the country. His work shows how the movement and tension between contemplation and action are not opposed; they complement one another.