Artist: Carlos Simón
Album: brea(d)th
Genre: Classical
Release Date: 2023
Audio Format:: FLAC (tracks) 24 bit, 96 kHz
Duration: 36:42
Total Tracks: 5
Total Size: 603 MB

Tracklist:

1-1. Carlos Simón – 1. prologue (08:03)
1-2. Carlos Simón – 2. breath (04:52)
1-3. Carlos Simón – 3. elegy (05:43)
1-4. Carlos Simón – 4. bread (09:28)
1-5. Carlos Simón – 5. breadth (08:34)

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Brea(d)th is a classical work, inspired by the enduring presence of George Floyd the Ancestor, asking America to consider an equitable future. We come to the resilient and root-rich Twin Cities as outsiders, but we composed this work from within the walls of Black emotion, curiosity, and dignity. The piece explores a historical timeline that stretches from the pre-colonial to the present condition, and perhaps further, into a post-pandemic America. Who would we be if we used covid-19 as an opportunity to focus on both public health, *and* public healing? Our entire country has endured a trauma… how do we publicly heal?…Brea(d)th is a work in four movements ranging from the Pentecostal to the monastic. I created a libretto that considers bread, as in value, breath, as in lifeforce, and breadth, as in the radius of American promise. Encoded within the work is a reverence for local intelligence, sacrifice, loss, and strength. The Minnesota Orchestra is a citizen institution, and thus the work has an implied and imbued civic import. Truthfully though, our commitment was to make a work that emanated from and responded to a local experience, while recognizing the hollowing hope that vastly stretches across the body of African America.

Brea(d)th is a moving, yearning, admonition for repair. It was made by two American sons in honor of George, and in reflection of the fellowship of the gone too soon…