Jodi French’s title piece “an urgent plea for a better world”
By Debora Gordon for Ashland.news
Memorial Day weekend’s “Cannons Into Bells” concert at the Southern Oregon University Recital Hall features Southern Oregon Repertory Singers’ Composer in Residence, Jodi French, who wrote the title piece, which, among other compositions, explores the possibilities of transformation.
The performance program explains: “Cannons and bells: one symbolizes peace, one war. Ironically, they are made of the same metals, often in the same factories and, tragically, from early on, bells have been melted into cannons in times of war, and back again in times of peace.”
Originally from a small farming town in Jordan, Minnesota, French started playing piano at the age of three, encouraged by her musician parents.
“I started making sounds on the piano and have probably played every day since then,” she said.
She has continued throughout her life. Her mother taught her to read music, and she played several instruments in high school, including drums. She also briefly studied with Alex Tutunov, Piano and Artist in Residence Professor at SOU.
French’s performance history dates back to age 10.
“I started performing, playing for my church services, and then it was playing for community theater shortly after that,” she said.
She also played with her older brother, also a musician, guitar player, and percussionist.
Relocating to Ashland about 30 years ago, she met her husband, director Paul French, through musician friends who asked if she had played for him.
“He needed a pianist, and we ended up doing a show together, and got to be really good friends. And then, we fell in love and here we are married,” she said. “He was already with the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers, and they needed a pianist.”
Soon after, Jodi French became their pianist and composer.
Her featured composition, “Cannons into Bells”, was partly inspired by “The War God,” a poem by Stephen Spender, and Martin Espada’s “Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World,” written in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
They led to a poem French wrote as an “urgent plea for a better world.”
“I’m playing along with most of it on piano. We have two percussionists playing tympani vibraphone and the cymbals,” she said.
The song will be sung by the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers.
French is often inspired a range of writers, speakers, and prayers from around the world, such as the Dalai Lama’s daily recitation of an ancient traditional Buddhist prayer on the importance of kindness and being of service every day.
“May I be a guard for those who need protection, a light for those you know in the dark, a path, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood,” the prayer reads.
French also explains that music may communicate ideas not as easily expressed in words.
“Paint and dance and sing and play, because we don’t always have words to describe certain parts of being human,” she said. “The words and sounds and harmonies, down to the way that I feel when I think about the things that we’re all struggling with and what I wrote about feels particularly relevant now, with the kinds of conflicts that we have. We’ve forgotten how to care for one another. Not completely, but we go in and out, up and down, and then with these individual paths and as individuals. We just give it our best shot, try to stay on some kind of a path of our own and stay in community. I tried to write about that.”
A sample of French’s composition, “Sleep of the Seven Lights,” as performed by the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers, is a good introduction to her music.
The concert program also describes its mission as “enriching the community through the transformative power of voice.”
Attend the concert at SOU Music Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 24, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 25.
Debora Gordon is a writer, artist, educator and non-violence activist who moved to Ashland from Oakland, California. Email her at [email protected].
