Julia Wolfe: Fire in My Mouth

Usher Hall, Edinburgh - 21/08/24

 Philharmonia Orchestra – Marin Alsop, conductor; National Youth Choir of Scotland – Christopher Bell, artistic director; Anne Kauffman, multimedia director; Jeff Sugg, lighting and video design

A deeply moving memorial to 146 immigrant factory workers neglectfully killed in a fire that swept through the Asch Building in New York on 25 March 1911, contemporary American composer Julia Wolfe’s large-scale, four-movement work for choir and orchestra is both musically effective and dramatically gripping.

 Fusing chorus, orchestra, screen projection and lighting into a multimedia artistic whole, ‘Fire in My Mouth’ takes the listener and viewer on a tragic journey, starting with the arrival in the United States of migrants (a significant number of them women) from Latin America and Eastern Europe. The opening section (‘Immigration’) of what is in essence a modern oratorio uses a wide range of orchestral gestures moulded by the primacy of post-minimalist rhythmic propulsion in Wolfe’s eclectic musical vocabulary. The atmosphere is one of anticipation, but also uncertainty, as the women wonder what life will hold for them under the luring promise of the Statue of Liberty.

 Every victim of the 1911 fire is represented by a member of the chorus, with five women forming a solo quintet and the choir moving from the back to the front of the stage, supplemented midway through by the appearance of more singers processing up the two central aisles. Throughout the performance the video screen, with surtitles for the libretto positioned above it, projects images of the sea (for the arrival of immigrants), actual photos from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the streets around it, and quoted comments about the unfolding events.

 The mood changes dramatically in the work’s second section (‘Factory’). Scraped, scratched and tapped strings, stabs of woodwind and brass, and crashing percussion are used in an inventive, innovative and effective way to conjure up a grating and relentless image of the factory floor. Declamatory singing gives way to howling and moaning. There is the first hint of a fire siren. The choir hold scissors above their heads and clack them loudly in unison to signal impending doom.

 The choir then move to the front of the stage from all directions in the third act (‘Protest’). Here the workers raise their voices in anger against the injustice around them. “I want to say a few words. I am a working girl. One of those striking against intolerable conditions. I want to lay down my scissors.” The message is reinforced with powerful four-part choral singing and a rising orchestral temperature. We hear Clara Lemich: “Then I had fire in my mouth.”

 In a brief conversation after the performance, composer Julia Woolfe told me that the fourth part of this musical drama, which artfully combines classical, vernacular and experimental techniques, was for her the most difficult to write. “Fire” begins with muffled voices and a rushing sound produced by string players whipping their bows back-and-forth through the air. Industrial percussion and the rising clamour and pitch of the orchestra and choir marks the terrible arrival of the blaze.

 These are moments of human desperation and tragedy. “Then a big smoke came. He kissed her, threw her into space, and jumped.” Bass-driven menace gives way to the dissonant mourning of piano, orchestra and choir in the funeral scenes. Then, in the final moments, the names of all 146 victims appear sequentially on the screen, ending together on one full page.

The applause at end was rapturous and heartfelt. It would be nigh impossible not to be moved by this deeply effecting work, shaped by music that both tugs at the emotions tonally and rhythmically, but also does not shy away from sonic confrontation. Conductor Marin Alsop marshalled the performance wonderfully. My only wish would have been for her to hold the concluding silence just a little more. The only fitting response to a monumental musical elegy that takes us through all the stages of shock and grief, yet somehow elevates the human spirit with a message of hope and defiance.       

Julia Wolfe: https://juliawolfemusic.com