"Knit Inside Me" for Solo Harp

Programme Note:

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In September 2020, doctors at an American prison performed a violent, forced hysterectomy—the removal of a women’s uterus—onto more than 40 female immigrant prisoners. Without their consent. These women can no longer have children. And—as prisoners in a foreign country—they are locked away.

Elsewhere, a mother sings a lullaby to her newborn child before bedtime—“El rorro niño.” The child sleeps, and smiles, and hopes, and dreams. The imprisoned women could also be doing this, singing lullabies to their children.

How do we give birth to music—here, through the ancient, maternal body of the harp?

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And can a lullaby save us from the nightmares?