Composer Alex Freeman joins SonoVoce to answer questions and discuss his piece, "Calle sin nombre"

April 6, 2021
Zoom screen with multiple participants
Alex Freeman holding up his hands and talking to students
Zoom screen with multiple participants
Alex Freeman holding up his hands and talking to students

This year, SonoVoce has put its heart and soul into preparing Finnish-American composer Alex Freeman's powerful work, Calle sin nombre. Monday, our singers met Alex, and the visit certainly did not disappoint! Thank you, Alex, for sharing your story behind the composition of this heartbreaking piece, showing us your sketches, and providing insight into your compositional process. We so very much appreciate you Zooming in (at 6am Finland time, no less) to provide us this valuable experience.

As Alex notes in the score, "The texts of Calle sin nombre are drawn from quotations from first-hand accounts of families seeking asylum who are victims of the policies of family separation" at our border with Mexico. "These desperate words tread with bare feet across shards of fragmented lines from Emma Lazarus's The New Colossus (the iconic poem enshrined at the base of The Statue of Liberty." SonoVoce will present this powerful work later this spring.