Songlines, Scripps College’s unique performance series of eclectic poetry and music by Southern California artists, will host a performance by poet and scholar Harryette Mullen accompanied by the Mallarmé Chamber Players on Wednesday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m. in Balch Auditorium on the Scripps campus. The performance, “Muse and Drudge,” and reception immediately following are free and open to the public. SONGLINES is sponsored through the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series at Scripps College; for more information, please call the Malott Commons Office at (909) 607-8508.
Harryette Mullen grew up in Texas, the descendent of teachers and Baptist ministers in the still-segregated South. While attending the University of Texas as an undergraduate, Mullen embarked on a writing career, participating in the burgeoning Black Arts movement of the 1970s and working with the Texas Commission on the Arts’ Artists-in-the-Schools program.
The focus of Mullen’s poetry and essays has been to examine, explore, and negotiate identity and culture. As she herself notes: “I write, ideally, for a diverse audience. As a reader, writer, and teacher I have many opportunities to consider the instability of interpretation when people don’t necessarily share the same cultural knowledge or social background. My recent work tries to navigate along the linguistic borders where a word or phrase can mean one thing or another to different audiences. Muse & Drudge was the crucial work that brought audiences together, overcoming ‘aesthetic apartheid’ and cultural difference.”
The author of numerous books of poetry, Mullen’s most recently published collections include Sleeping with the Dictionary, Blues Baby, and Muse & Drudge. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and magazines and have also been included in Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women; Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry; The Jazz Poetry Anthology; among others. Mullen is the recipient of several awards and honors including artist grants from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, and a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester.
Mullen earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas, Austin, and a doctoral degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has taught literature and writing courses at Cornell University, and she is currently on faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mallarmé Chamber Players is a nationally acclaimed ensemble of 25 professional musicians and guest artists based in Durham, North Carolina. In addition to playing rarely performed works from the traditional chamber music repertoire, Mallarmé celebrates community diversity by featuring the music of Black, Asian, Latino, Indian, and women composers, and regularly commissioning new works by American composers.
For the “Muse and Drudge” performance at Scripps, scheduled Mallarmé artists are: Louise Toppin, soprano; Anna Ludwig Wilson, flute; Yoram Youngerman, viola; Nathan Leyland, cello; and Thomas Warburton, piano. The group will perform an eclectic suite-from chamber music to cabaret-by such diverse composers as Undine Smith Moore, Johann Sebastian Bach, Aaron Copland, and Thomas Jefferson Anderson. A program highlight will be the musical performance of “7 Caberet Songs,” an original work composed by Thomas Jefferson Anderson and inspired by Harryette Mullen’s Muse & Drudge poems.
The ensemble’s name comes from 19th-century French poet and essayist Stéphane Mallarmé, who believed that true art was created through the synergy of music with other art forms such as dance, literature, and the visual arts. Performances are often interdisciplinary and have been praised by critics and audiences alike as innovative, eclectic, and of the highest artistic quality.
Mallarmé Chamber Players’ innovative programs, including comments by the artists and participatory activities, create a uniquely intimate atmosphere for audience and musicians alike, and help forge new models for community-based arts organizations.