Bearing Witness: Pieces for Cello from Kirsten Whitson
Sunday, January 26, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier Street, Saint Paul, MN
The East Side Freedom Library is please to welcome back Kirsten Whitson as she performs Bearing Witness.
Bearing Witness is a program of music for cello that reflects global racial injustice, genocide and cultural loss. It is a musical experience designed to promote learning and awaken empathy, inspiring authentic connections and deeper community engagement. It is an enlightening concert, weaving together history lessons from a worldwide perspective with an artistic focus. Between pieces, video narration provides real-life stories from marginalized cultures. The storytellers are teenagers, representing the next generation; our future. The juxtaposition of children with these important issues is powerful. Following the performance, the community is invited to participate in a facilitated discussion about what it means to “bear witness.”
The program:
Thirty-Eight Tears by Timothy C. Takach, which honors the Dakota men executed in Mankato, MN by the US Government in 1862, with poetry by the Dakota author Gwen Westerman, written for me
Khse Buon by Chinary Ung, a Cambodian who lost family members during the Khmer Rouge regime
Sonata No. 1 by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish Jew who fled Warsaw as a teen during World War Two
Three Pieces for Solo Cello: Rosewood, Pickin’ and The Long Way North by John Williams, about the racially motivated destruction of Rosewood, FL in 1923
Finding Refuge Together by Jocelyn Hagen, with a video essay by Kao Kalia Yang, about her childhood in a refugee community in St. Paul (written for me)
Kirsten Whitson is a cellist in Saint Paul and a 2020 McKnight Artist Fellow. Bearing Witness has been recognized with four awards. She was awarded the Artist Initiative Grant in 2018 from the Minnesota State Arts Board to create and develop the program. She was awarded a 2021 Creative Support grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to commission another piece for the program by Minnesota artists, to bring focus to our local community. The Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers her a grant to work with mentor James Bowey to create the format for a post concert community conversation.
This event is free and open to everyone for the cause of solidarity!