Over the past few years, I have been turning to artistry – that of others and my own – to process and manage my own heartache over events taking place in the Twin Cities and around the world. (Let aid into Gaza now!)

In May, I traveled to DC to experience “Over My Head, I Hear Music In The Air,” a musical celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon presented by her daughter, Toshi. 

Dr. Reagon, among so many (MANY) things, was the founder of the seminal, Black a cappella women’s ensemble, Sweet Honey in the Rock.  A long time inspiration for my own a a cappella journeying (even before joining Give Get Sistet 😉), Sweet Honey pioneered activism and inclusion through songwork in countless ways, from what they sang and to whom, to when and where they sang it, and through being the first vocal group I know of who had a signing  (ASL) member. 

Hearing Reagon’s family and friends share stories and songs from the musical tradition Dr. Reagon both upheld and worked to fashion was significant and moving. I was especially moved to witness the performances of elders Charles Neblett and Rutha Mae Harris  –  original members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, who sang at numerous events and actions during the civil rights movement of the 60s.  

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As I connect with more and more artists and projects doing griefwork, I see that grief and grieving have been at the center of pretty much all of my artistic work of the past few years. 

In 2022, I explored making improvised vocal music from the sounds we use to express sorrow. I wondered if the sounds themselves could help us digest grief so I titled the work, Giving Voice to Grief.

The following year, that improvised composition birthed a project of leading singing-sounding circles to help us hold grief communally. I’ve come to believe that perhaps injuries to communities, like the death of community members at the hands of police, the trauma of the pandemic and its aftermaths (or watching genocides in real time on social media 😖) might require spaces where people can grieve in community. 

To that end, I will continue my Giving Voice to Grief community singing circles in a residency at Lakewood Cemetery this year. I am part of a four-artist cohort and my project centers on holding seasonal sings to mark how we carry, digest and transmute grief over time. I’ll host four gatherings in Lakewood’s stunning (both visually and sonically) chapel and invite community to join me in singing to our grief and loss. 

The theme for our summer sounding is The Fruits of Grief: Change and Love and will take place Monday, June 16th at the Lakewood Chapel.

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With the Giving Voice gatherings of the upcoming and past years; my writing, staging and performing of Heap Cull Gather Sow at Pillsbury House last year (Naked Stages); and my composer’s residency with Zietgeist this past winter (Precipice: Breaths For Diving), I’ve been creating an expanding collection of works about loss and sorrow. 

This month I am finishing work on yet another project* focused on how we use sound to explore and journey with grief.

Over the past 14 months, I composed improvised pieces for small ensembles (solo, duos and trios). The pieces involve text, numeric and graphic scores; work with collages; and live looping. I realized that I had started thinking of these pieces as movements in a much larger work – my “grief suite,” if you will.

What is most interesting (right now (c;) is how this griefwork is leading me into other artistic areas, many of them visual, like the set I created for Heap Cull Gather Sow, the placemaking and grounding spaces I’m crafting at my singing events, and work with collages and broken objects.

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*Sarah M. Greer is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the MN State Arts Board thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

I began the practice of picking an annual keyword as I was leaving music school and starting my artistic career. It’s hard to believe that I am now selecting my 16th one.

For me, keywords take the place of resolutions because they connect to other words and other ideas in both direct and more organic ways. These connections — how they show up and link up — feel a lot like how I improvise. 

Last year’s word was WONDER. I chose it because I hoped to spend the year investigating my artistic ideas and appreciating the beauty of the journey to those discoveries. 

Then in May, I received an invitation to take part in a performing arts fellowship called Naked Stages. Naked Stages is program originated to help emerging artists (2-10 years of creating original generative work) to create a solo piece from conception through on-stage performance. With the support of the fellowship events and activities (workshops, a conference, work in progress sessions etc.), I created a solo show combining my prose, songs and place-making practices. 

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I’ll readily admit to spending a healthy chunk of 2024 wondering how to make a theatrical solo performance.😉 In the final program evaluation, I remarked that I often arrived to work sessions feeling like I hadn’t done my homework. But as each deadline arrived, I discovered I was able to create something. And, in hindsight, I can see that I simply decided that I would decide rather than asking someone else — program staff, my artist cohort — for answers. In fact, even though sometimes I kind of hoped someone would tell me how to create my show, I never asked anyone to tell me how.

Because I knew it needed to be my show.

As an improviser, I practice (and practice) trusting my intuition and this fellowship was all about exploring my own artistic process(es). And since at the heart of the project, I had to create a performance, I realized that I have been developing (and am developing) a multi-disciplinary praxis to do just that for quite some time.

For example, I knew I wanted the piece to include new songs/music so I returned to my 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project to encourage musical/melodic ideas. September’s 30 Days sparked the gathering songs I incorporated into my show. 

The year before, I’d begun some visual art practices (no one was/is more surprised than I), such as collaging and assembling what my friend LN calls “emotional terrariums” that helped me uncover parts of the my performance piece, including much of my “set design.”  (Note: my stage is not at all naked. 🤷🏽‍♀️😉)

Recently, these visual undertakings have stimulated my curiosity about graphic scores and other approaches to improvised compositions. 

I guess even this blog could be considered part of my artistic praxis.

Hmm … was praxis my word for 2025? 🤔

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As is pretty common, I thought about (and discarded) a number of words for 2025. I usually begin contemplating in December and friends & family share ideas for their words, which inspires a list of words like …

• action (too demanding)
• witness (not active enough)
• momentum (not focused enough)
• praxis (been there, done that?),
• compose (I have some music-making projects planned this year … )
• peace (“what the world needs now … ?”)

And then, as sometimes happens, a word simply … arrives.

Okay, technically, I was reviewing my keywords posts from years past and came upon a list of words I’d included to try to inspire others and ended up inspiring myself.🤷🏽‍♀️😉 In that list was this year’s keyword, and, as my friend M says, when you know, you know. (Ya know?) 

That’s what happened this time.

My keyword for 2025 is …

TRUST.

(Oof.)

Because TRUST feels hard and challenging and maybe even wrong or gullible, but simultaneously important and necessary as I/we approach the coming year and grapple with all the terrors  and consequences of the preceding ones. 

But … (So?)

I need to trust in my art-making and its importance, trust in my collaborators and our collaborations, and most important, trust in the goodwill of others and our ability to find ways forward that serve, care for, and elevate everybody. 

Finally, as I learn from improvising again and again (and again and again and again and again), TRUST that there is a way forward that we can – and might only – find when we listen with our heads and our hearts. 

I began work on Heap Cull Gather Sow in May when I was awarded a fellowship with Pillsbury House + Theater through their program for emerging artists called Naked Stages.

Naked Stages is a 7-month fellowship that “provides performance artists with the time, resources, and mentorship needed to bring distinctive visions to life on stage.” In addition to regular feedback sessions, we’ve participated in workshops with local creators and nationally-renowned artists. (A special part of our fellowship was attending the first Theatrical Jazz Conference. ) We’ve also taken part in production meetings focused on the business side of art, from audience development to technical support, in efforts to assist us in developing a sustainable, artistic careers.

This year the Naked Stages cohort has four artists: hal sansone (Trans Man Gay Club Disco Fantasy), Skye Reddy (The Field of Three Horizons), Atim Opaka (This body is a gift: Messages from the Ancestors) and yours truly (Heap Cull Gather Sow). We will share our pieces in 6 shows across two weekends (Nov 14-16 and Nov 21-23, all at 7pm).

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Getting started

Much of my work since 2020 has been focused on or sourced from my own searching for ways to hold, digest, transmute, and siphon grief. As I began work on this show, I was concluding a year of work on an improvised vocal work, Giving Voice to Grief.

And with daily additions to the list of things hurting my heart via world events and social media, I realized that I have been improvising practices to help my head and my heart.

So when asked to bring “up to 5 minutes” of my “show” to prepare for our works in progress session, I started by revisiting a post I wrote here about making my “jar of broken pieces.” I outlined (and then abstracted) some of the steps of the ceremonial praxis I improvised while assembling the jar. That text became the prose I workshopped in our first session.

Then during our 3-day retreat (also in July), I did some staging and movement work with the “ceremony text” and began gathering (pun intended) bits of writing and ideas for songs/lyrics.

Of course, I knew I wanted to have songs/singing in my show so last month I moved my annual November improv project – 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project – to September to help me find sonic seeds for my show. (I also figured I was gonna be a little too busy next month to post a song a day. 😉) Posting a song each day helped me create and collect a lot of ideas, including the frames of two gathering songs that have become scenes in Heap Cull Gather Sow.

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Working with a director

In spite of all those years I worked as the vocal coach for Northeast’s musical theater program, I actually don’t know a lot about making theater. Fortunately, Naked Stages provides funding for each artist to work with a director.

I have the privilege and pleasure of working with Dipankar Muhkerjee, as the director for my piece.

I first worked with Pangea World Theater and really began getting to know Dipankar and Meena (Pangea’s founders and artistic directors) in the summer of 2020 when I was part of The Burning Truth Project.

(It’s worth noting that I’d been hearing about Pangea for a number of years prior. Given all the time I spend improvising, I don’t know why I continue to be surprised at how consistently people and places arrive “right on time”?)

In fact, Dipankar deserves credit for planting the seed which resulted in my applying to the Naked Stages fellowship program in the first place. After a rehearsal or a gathering (I can’t quite recall), he said, “We should do something together? Maybe a show with your music?” This memory of this conversation surfaced when I saw the posting for the fellowship. So while I had no idea how I might create a theatrical work, I thought to myself “Dipankar thinks there’s a show there” so I applied.

I’ve spent some (okay, a lot?) of this fellowship feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to keep reminding myself that that’s the point. I also remind myself regularly that I actually know what I’m doing, even if I’m still figure out what I’m making.

So the Dipankar and I have been meeting regularly and the show is arriving in pieces, mostly through (surprise, surprise) improvisations.

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Lastly, I can’t help but notice the amount of tactile processes and crafted items that have been part of my evolving griefwork praxis – collages, gathering and interacting with broken things, mending/hand sewing, placemaking, etc. Less surprising is the fact that many of these practices – and items – are finding their way into my show.

See the show!

Heap Cull Gather Sow – November 15, 21 and 23rd – 7pm
Pillsbury House + Theatre
3501 Chicago Avenue South, Mpls
Get tix (pay what you can pricing)