With a lingering yet abrupt beginning, A Dialogue Between Mother & Daughter made its international debut at the Festival of Words.
A completely original collaboration between Lorna Crozier and Leslie Uyeda, the performance piece told the haunting tale of a mother and daughter reaching out for one another through years of memories and disconnect.
Uyeda’s music punctuated Crozier’s words, at first read by the disembodied voice of the mother high up in the audience, until she is drawn up to the stage to join the daughter’s lilting voice.
The voices of both Heather Pawsey, soprano, and Megan Latham, mezzo-soprano, lent a robustness to the emotion wrapped around Crozier’s words, creating tension alongside the tumultuous conversation between the mother and the daughter.
The rise and fall of the story clings, beginning sweet and reminiscent before darkening into blame, and finally turning into a feeling of peace. That moment of clarity is combined with an ominous dip in Uyeda's accompaniment, delving deeper into the low range of the grand piano’s clear tones.
It’s a beautiful piece, one that Crozier wrote with the intention of touching every person’s relationship with their mother, in small ways.
“Everybody has a mother and we all have issues with our mother. I wanted to present a piece that was complex in showing the relationship between a mother and her daughter, and that there was a lot of love there but there were things that also went wrong,” said Crozier.
“All the images are prairie images — the dust, the wind, the birdlife, the plants and gardens that are indicative of this place. I also wanted it to be about place, because although I’ve lived away from Saskatchewan since 1991, it’s what’s formed my blood and bones and is a major part of the words I want to speak,” said Crozier.
Crozier would love to see the performance on more stages, and is pleased to be a part of a fantastic collaboration of talented artists.
“It’s a real treat, as an artist, to be able to collaborate with a different kind of artist,” said Crozier. “When Leslie asked me to write something specifically for her, I knew she was going to do something marvelous with it.”
Crozier has been attending the Festival for as many years as it has been held, and is glad to see it’s continuing legacy.
