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. 

Earlier this month marked the anniversary of the date the Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded. With the help of 112 backers (and the MN State Arts Board) I successfully raised the funds to complete my debut solo album – What the Music Says Do.

I cannot believe that’s it’s only been a year since I was in the studio recording the album. And I am astonished at how quickly the time since the CD release event in August has gone. Speaking of …

We had SO MUCH FUN(!) at my CD release party! I wasn’t sure I could begin to describe what it was like to get all gussied up, load up my CDs, head out to the Dunsmore Room and sing an evening’s worth of my own songs with so many of the truly amazing singers and players with whom I was blessed to co-create on this project.

So I decided to show you. *smile*

The night was young, (the skies were clear,) the room was packed full of family and friends … and the band looked great (if I do say so myself) and sounded amazing!

During my vacation a week before the show, my family helped me figure out how to present my CDs at the show.

Speaking of family … my brother and sister were there. (So were my parents. *smile*)

My sister came from Massachusetts with her husband and my niece. You may recall that I wrote a song – “If Only You Knew” – for my nieces and included it on the album. Singing that song to my niece in front of my siblings and parents was a special moment for me.

Another highlight was a guest appearance by my sisters in song – the Give Get Sistet. They sang on the album and came to help me close out the first set.

Massive thanks to my family for ALL of their support and the efforts they made to travel and be there for my “really big shoe.” (Especially my mom who stayed up late – or was it early? *grin* – helping me package all those Kickstarter rewards.)

And a special thank you to my shutterbugs – family, friends and videographer Guy Wagner – without whom I would have no pictures of this event.

Last summer, I ran into my friend and composer/drummer Davu Seru and he asked me if I would be interested in singing in a piece he was developing called Dead King Mother.

He called it a blues for chamber ensemble and told me that it was inspired by his aunt Arlene who raised his cousins on her own after her husband, Davu’s uncle, was arrested for killing a white man (John F. Murray) the evening that Dr. King was assassinated.

Davu told me about seeing his Uncle Clarence at his aunt’s funeral. His uncle thanked his aunt for raising their children, stating that he had been way and that some people at the funeral knew where he was. Davu was struck by the fact that his uncle didn’t offer any kind of explanation or apology to Arlene and wondered what she might have said to Clarence in response.

I was particularly interested in the piece because it raised questions about the experiences of the people, especially the women, around these historical actors (King and Uncle Clarence).

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Flash forward to September of last year and the first rehearsal for the piece. This was the first time I heard elements of the piece and ensemble, which at the time I believe was marimba, piano, percussion and clarinet(?). Davu had outlined the melody I would sing, but the text was not set. He sang the vocal lines for me in a clear, flute-like head voice.

In January, we began rehearsing the piece with the full ensemble. The complete chamber ensemble would include flute, flugelhorn, clarinet, bassoon and tuba, as well as vibraphone, percussion and piano. And Davu would conduct the piece, not perform it. When asked about the instrumentation, Davu said, “I write for the instruments I want to hear. *smile*

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We debuted Dead King Mother in February and then performed it on the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination. Members of Clarence Underwood and John F. Murry’s families were at all of the performances.

As we rehearsed and presented the work, I noticed that audiences kept wanting the piece to be something other than what it was. Davu had a written a blues, but someone asked him if it was an aria from a larger opera (and when/if he would be writing the “rest” of it). Davu was clear that he was not composing an opera. Someone else suggested ways it might be staged in future performances, leading me to assume they viewed Dead King Mother as a theatrical work. John Murray’s second cousin, Jack, who attended all of the performances, noted that the story felt like a Greek tragedy.

And a number of people expressed a desire for the piece to tell “both sides of the story.”

I thought to myself, “How many women and people of color die or are murdered in how many stories and no one asks a single question about them?” Take the cliched black man who dies first in so many movies. How many of us ask questions about him? And then there’s the myriad murdered prostituted women in movies and TV about whom we usually learn … nothing.

More to the point, Davu had written a personal composition about his family. In one of the talk-back sessions, he was asked why he hadn’t included the perspective of John Murray’s wife. He replied, “I didn’t know that woman.”

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It was an educational and emotional experience to work on Dead King Mother. I have lived in Minneapolis for a long time and I didn’t know any of this history until I began work on this project.

At the April 4th performance, Arlete Little facilitated a panel that included elder Spike Moss, Davu and Clarence’s daughter, Kelly. Mr. Moss talked about what Dr. King meant to black people living in the Jim Crow north and the impact of his assassination and Kelly talked about her relationship with her parents. One of the things she said during the panel was that on that chaotic night, her mother was always right next to her. Later that even when I sang the line in the piece, “I don’t know how to be a man, just a mother with my babies my side.” I could almost see six-year-old Kelly with her mother on that memorable night.

Meeting the members of these families resonated most for me. My mother is an archivist and my sister is a historian and I thought of them both as I engaged this piece. Davu and Dead King Mother changed my relationship to historical events. As my sister knows and teaches, we create history. We are its actors and its subjects. And, as Davu says in a promo video he filmed for the piece, “I thought I would try to figure out some way to write music as history.”

You can read more about the events that inspired the work and listen to excerpts on Davu’s web site.