Songs of the Winged Soul — Grace Maffucci '22 and Michael Kregler

Grace Maffucci ’22 and Michael Kregler, PC’s resident accompanist and faculty member in the Department of Music, entertain and delight in this episode of the Providence College Podcast, performing Latin American poems they set to original music. Maffucci, a music and Spanish major, sings accompanied by Kregler on piano. Between songs, they discuss the art of setting verse to song and studying music at Providence College.

00;00;01;12 - 00;00;32;09
Michael Hagan
Hello and welcome to the Providence College Podcast. I'm Michael Hagen from the class of 2015 and I'm joined by producer Chris Judge from the class of 2005 Our guests today are Grace Murphy from the senior class of 2022 and Michael Pregler from the Faculty of Music Peace's resident accompanist and who instructs jazz piano and composition. Grace is a music performance and Spanish major who recently completed her senior thesis, Cantor Stella Alma Alda, for which she translated and with Mike all set to music, a number of Latin American poems.

00;00;32;20 - 00;00;38;27
Michael Hagan
We hope you're as excited as we are to hear about the project and to hear some of the poems performed. Grace, Michael, thanks for joining us.

00;00;38;28 - 00;00;40;02
Grace Maffucci
Thanks for having it. Pleasure.

00;00;40;20 - 00;00;47;05
Michael Hagan
So, Grace, you're a student of music and of the Spanish language. Can you tell us a little bit about your path to studying these two disciplines?

00;00;47;29 - 00;01;08;12
Grace Maffucci
Sure. So music came first for me. I've been a singer most of my life and was in private lessons and choir throughout high school. And so I knew I wanted to continue with music in college. But when I entered high school, I started taking Spanish and I just fell in love. And so after four years of mostly honors Spanish classes, I knew that I had to continue.

00;01;08;19 - 00;01;12;01
Grace Maffucci
In Spanish and luckily at Providence College, I get to do both.

00;01;12;18 - 00;01;16;02
Michael Hagan
Michael, tell us a little bit about your background before coming to Providence College.

00;01;17;02 - 00;01;36;23
Michael Kregler
Well, like Grace, there was a lot of music involved in high school. I did a lot of work with the choirs as well as with the jazz band. I did some Spanish study too, of course, in high school. But then in college, I knew I wanted to do music. So I went to the University of Miami, where there was also a lot of Spanish going on because it's Miami.

00;01;37;09 - 00;02;05;14
Michael Kregler
I also studied jazz and composition and ended up doing a lot of accompanying both of choirs, singers and instrumentalists. So that's when it became evident that that that was going to be part of my career choices, too. So after leaving Miami and moving here to Rhode Island, where I was working, Rhode Island College and now at Providence College, I also ended up meeting a lot of Colombian friends, which put my Spanish skills into better shape than they actually were in Miami.

00;02;05;25 - 00;02;10;20
Michael Kregler
And long story short, I do music here in Rhode Island at Providence College.

00;02;11;12 - 00;02;24;07
Michael Hagan
So grace in broad strokes, because we'll discuss your your work more specifically in a minute. Can you tell us about Canto Stella Alma, a lot of your project, your collaborative project with Michael of adapting Latin American poetry in song?

00;02;24;29 - 00;02;50;03
Grace Maffucci
Sure. So as I was preparing for my senior recital in my junior year, at the end of my junior year, I was putting together repertoire, and I knew that as a Spanish major, I wanted to have Spanish language songs in featured on my recital, but with my Latin American studies minor and my my interest, my shared interest with Mike in Latin American culture, I really wanted to find some Latin American songs.

00;02;50;28 - 00;03;18;29
Grace Maffucci
And kind of looking through with my voice teacher, I just really couldn't find any songs that were really written for my voice. So there's really kind of a lack of Latin American poetry in our song. And so I was speaking to Mike about this, and we had the idea of Mike being the composer in residence here, had the idea of writing songs if we just picked the poems together.

00;03;18;29 - 00;03;20;22
Grace Maffucci
And then that's kind of how it came about.

00;03;21;06 - 00;03;29;19
Michael Hagan
So I want to get started with one of the poems right away, and we're very excited to share these with listeners. So what is the first song you'll be performing and what is it about?

00;03;30;07 - 00;04;00;05
Grace Maffucci
Sure. So the first song is called Entry Loss Aviles, which is the title of the poem by Luiz Marie Giraldo. And it's really a song sort of about the rhythms of life, the passage of time, and nature. A lot of the songs in our set focus on nature, specifically birds. Mike and I are Big Bird fans, so there is a mention of the woodpecker kind of starting starting the day, a normal day in nature.

00;04;00;25 - 00;04;07;06
Michael Hagan
Michael, musically speaking, is there anything in the arrangement that listeners should listen out to for specifically?

00;04;07;11 - 00;04;35;27
Michael Kregler
Yeah, for sure. You'll hear many examples of the rumba clearly. So this is an Afro-Cuban rhythm, which you'll hear Grace and I actually clap it at the beginning of the song, but it's also incorporated into the piano part as well as other parts. This is a super important rhythm that is the roots of all sorts of Latin American styles, including salsa, and it felt natural as one of the rhythms of life to go along with the context of the poem.

00;04;36;10 - 00;04;41;16
Michael Hagan
This is Andre Lewis, Our Ballets Set to Music by Michael Craig and performed by Grace Murphy.

00;04;59;20 - 00;05;46;13
Grace Maffucci

00;05;47;25 - 00;05;53;26
Grace Maffucci

00;05;54;01 - 00;06;56;10
Grace Maffucci

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Grace Maffucci

00;07;00;25 - 00;07;39;12
Grace Maffucci

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Grace Maffucci

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Grace Maffucci

00;08;06;11 - 00;08;11;09
Michael Hagan
Grace, you mentioned the poet behind the words you just sang. Could you tell us a little bit about her?

00;08;12;01 - 00;08;42;13
Grace Maffucci
Yeah. So Lou's Mary. Mary Louise. Mary. Hello. Is a Colombian female poet still living sort of contemporary and we actually featured her twice in Canada's El Al Malala because she just has such a rich array of poetry. I actually found out recently I'm doing a little bit of digging that she studied music and she has some experience in piano and voice, which we didn't know before picking her poems.

00;08;42;13 - 00;08;56;21
Grace Maffucci
But it kind of speaks to the musicality of her, of her of her work. And she has a lot of poems kind of about, again, birds, nature sort of like those natural themes that really we were drawn to in choosing the works.

00;08;57;24 - 00;09;05;25
Michael Hagan
Michael, could you describe your approach to setting poetry to music? What in your eyes is the relationship between the composers, music and the poets? First.

00;09;06;10 - 00;09;31;25
Michael Kregler
That's a great question, and this is a super important thing for me to consider philosophy actually as a composer. So first and foremost, I think about being faithful and having respect for the poem, which in almost all cases when it comes to art song or choral settings, of poetry, the poems came first. So we're getting to use this preexisting thing sometimes by a very, very famous poet and sometimes a very famous poem in our music.

00;09;32;07 - 00;10;00;11
Michael Kregler
So we just have to be super respectful and again, faithful to the poem. The phrase setting a poem itself bears a lot of meaning because we are setting the words to our own rhythms and melodies. But most importantly, the rhythms, because there are speech like rhythms that a poet would use when they recite their poem. And then there are the rhythms that are going to be assigned to the words that the singer has to deal with.

00;10;00;19 - 00;10;25;05
Michael Kregler
And it's obviously easier to do if these are rhythms that suit the language as it's pronounced. And to that end, setting in Spanish was something that I hadn't even done for a long time. Even after the point, I was probably bilingual because I wanted to trust myself to have spoken Spanish well enough at that point in time. So it sounded convincing and I, I conferred with friends all the time.

00;10;25;05 - 00;10;55;00
Michael Kregler
Does this sound reasonable to you? Does this sound authentic in the way that the words are sung and just to make it gives an actual example of it? One very important thing when it comes to setting Spanish, which you often see done incorrectly, is either the inclusion of or the lack of allusions in English. We have lots and lots of vowels that we that we use the beginning of words, for example, elision, elision, but in Spanish that happens far less frequently, which is one reason the language sounds like it's going by really quickly.

00;10;55;16 - 00;11;18;12
Michael Kregler
One of the lines that Grace sang moments ago, Cumbia, El Koehler, del Tiempo, would never be spoken that way. It would be spoken cumbia, all that tempo. So as a composer, I'm literally using less syllables and probably less notes when I put that setting together. So the more of those that you do properly with the allusions, the more authentic the Spanish is.

00;11;18;12 - 00;11;21;08
Michael Kregler
Going to sound to a native speaker when it's sung.

00;11;22;15 - 00;11;43;10
Michael Hagan
That that reminds me of my senior year as an undergrad. I took a prosody seminar through the English department with Dr. Bennett, and there was one day one of the verse forms that we wrote in were ballads, and there was one day it was really cool. He had a few students who were musicians bring instruments, and we actually set our ballads to music as finished.

00;11;44;02 - 00;12;04;18
Michael Hagan
This this is a fair bit more sophisticated than that was but it's it really gave me an appreciation for the close relationship between the rhythms of speech and the rhythms of music and poetry and song go hand in hand. So taking a step back, I want to talk a little bit about music studies more broadly at Providence College.

00;12;05;02 - 00;12;09;15
Michael Hagan
What distinguishes Grace, the music performance studies experience at P.S.?

00;12;10;22 - 00;12;35;05
Grace Maffucci
I think the the biggest thing that I've really noticed about my music education here is the individualized attention I get because it's not a huge conservatory program. So with, you know, fewer students, we have just really devoted faculty and staff who are just really they really care about my interests and what I want to do and my success.

00;12;35;28 - 00;13;01;13
Grace Maffucci
But at the same time, because PC has such a diverse array of classes and we have requirements and different courses, you know, I'm able to to have a very well-rounded education while I have a very full music experience here. So I feel like, you know, I thought some some people would think it's it's a pain, but I actually found it to be an honor to be able to be in SIV classes, philosophy, theology.

00;13;01;13 - 00;13;07;10
Grace Maffucci
And at the same time, you know, being a full time music musician and full time music student here at Providence, College.

00;13;07;27 - 00;13;09;01
Michael Hagan
Michael, anything to add?

00;13;09;17 - 00;13;33;10
Michael Kregler
Yeah. Basically what she said, our music department on PC is strong, but it's humble and so it's natural for us to want to feed off of our students interest and to help cultivate them whenever it's possible, and especially when there are things that are in our own wheelhouse. So in Grace's case, her passion for jazz, Spanish, Latin America, the bossa nova, at one point she did an independent, independent study.

00;13;33;10 - 00;13;40;11
Michael Kregler
And that with me, it ended up naturally inspiring a lot of what she ended up studying and performing here at PC.

00;13;41;26 - 00;13;45;26
Michael Hagan
So returning to your project, how and when did your collaboration begin?

00;13;48;04 - 00;13;48;17
Grace Maffucci
Well.

00;13;49;04 - 00;14;08;21
Grace Maffucci
Started with the conversation. I went into Mike's office and I said, I just don't know what to put in my recital. There's just not enough Latin American art song. And he said, Well, let's let's do it ourselves. And so over the last summer, the summer before my senior year, we were sort of sending each other poems back and forth.

00;14;09;16 - 00;14;38;26
Grace Maffucci
And we came up with like a list of about 30 poems from Latin American authors all over, all over Latin America. And then we narrowed it down to eventually the five that are featured in our set. And then, you know, by October of my senior year, Mike had given me the music and we were rehearsing it. And my recital wasn't until April of 20, 22, but we had been rehearsing and basically we had been ready to perform the songs at the beginning of the my second semester.

00;14;40;00 - 00;14;56;10
Michael Hagan
Yeah. I think that your project is definitely a testament to the fact that the best senior projects and theses begin with having no idea what you're going to do for your senior project or thesis. Best place to start. Michael, what was your reaction to Grace approaching you about these poems?

00;14;56;18 - 00;15;18;24
Michael Kregler
I was thrilled because I hadn't said anything in Spanish for a while. I always love doing it, but I was especially eager to focus on the Latin American aspect of it. I already mentioned Colombia for Grace. It's it's Mexico and possibly Puerto Rico. But but I think Mexico as far as like her main interest when it comes to the Spanish language and culturally and for me it's Colombians.

00;15;19;07 - 00;15;29;21
Michael Kregler
So anyways, the I was really ready to focus on Latin American poetry and with someone who knew so much already about the Spanish language and Latin America.

00;15;30;21 - 00;15;33;20
Michael Hagan
So let's hear another song. Grace, what will you be performing next?

00;15;34;08 - 00;15;42;27
Grace Maffucci
Sure. So our next piece is By the same the same poet Luis Marie Giraldo. And this one is called Ora. They lost.

00;15;44;08 - 00;15;46;28
Michael Hagan
Michael, any notes about the arrangement or about the composition?

00;15;47;23 - 00;16;17;01
Michael Kregler
Sure. In this one, the poetry, if I've done my job correctly, is informing the mood of the music. Some adjectives that come to mind when I think of this poem are restless and surreal. There's a lot of activity going on, and so it felt natural to borrow some impressionistic Debussy, Ravel type piano gestures. This is French music, where they were very interested in imagery and trying to make that imagery come out through the way the piano is used.

00;16;18;12 - 00;16;35;27
Michael Kregler
For example, one of the translations or some of the translation of the lines, words being manipulated by a seamstress the weaving of tunics, the wind being exhausted by the birds. These are all these surreal, active kind of images in the poem. And so hopefully you'll hear that come out through the musical content as well.

00;16;36;19 - 00;16;42;25
Michael Hagan
All right. This is Laura Dello Sparrows, composed by Michael Krieger and performed by Grace Mei Fuji.

00;16;47;23 - 00;17;13;04
Grace Maffucci

00;17;16;26 - 00;17;20;11
Grace Maffucci

00;17;20;11 - 00;18;10;08
Grace Maffucci

00;18;10;09 - 00;18;28;03
Michael Hagan
Oh so Grace, you translated all of the poems that you too set to music into English as well. What was that process like?

00;18;29;09 - 00;18;50;07
Grace Maffucci
That was another kind of collaborative work. Mike and I really worked on it together and over a period of a couple of weeks, so I knew that, you know, translating the poems is not going to be as easy as a word, as a word for word translation, because that's just not the way that the languages just aren't congruent like that.

00;18;50;28 - 00;19;23;29
Grace Maffucci
So I did start out with kind of a word for word translation, and as Mike said, some of the texts were a little bit complex so the word for word translation was very confusing and a little difficult. But we started out with that and then we kind of sent the translations back and forth and you know, I really relied on Mike's experience with setting poetry, on reading poetry in both English and Spanish to kind of help, you know, to to to kind of fill the holes in the languages where, you know, where the Spanish just didn't quite translate into English.

00;19;23;29 - 00;19;50;08
Grace Maffucci
Well, and how we could kind of, you know, keep the the meaning and the this the essence of the poem in Spanish, but translate that into an into English so that the English speaking audience would be able to understand what we understood from the Spanish. And also, you know, kind of in the translations kind of fitting the meaning from the Spanish into like the rhythm of the English language.

00;19;50;15 - 00;20;05;09
Grace Maffucci
So it was not easy, especially with certain poems more than others. But Mike and I really worked hard to make sure that we felt that we had a final product of English translations that that would that were were loyal to the originals.

00;20;05;28 - 00;20;11;18
Michael Hagan
And where the rubber hits the road. What was like one of the hardest lines or series of lines for you two to translate?

00;20;12;06 - 00;20;30;08
Michael Kregler
There were definitely lines along the way. But I specifically think of, again, the song you just heard louder, they lost power us. That was because of the surreal and metaphoric nature of the poems. We went for a literal translation first and then into the poetic. And here's a line to show how the process was, how we kind of got there.

00;20;30;15 - 00;20;52;06
Michael Kregler
So the original Spanish first line of that poem is, you know, I see Blade Coast to Rio de la Palabra, Kubrick Kundera and Canosa, Larry, that de la gnocchi, which this is sort of close. But if you put this into the Google Translate, you will get elusive and seamstress, the word covers with deceitful cloth, the wounds of the night.

00;20;52;21 - 00;21;11;27
Michael Kregler
And although some of those were good, I started to realize that seamstress was being used as a noun here, even though it appeared to be an adjective, and that it was really the words that were functioning as the seamstress as far as I understood the poem. So what ended up in Grace's translations on her recital program was an elusive seamstress.

00;21;12;04 - 00;21;24;04
Michael Kregler
Words cover with fur to the fabric the wounds of the night and so on and so forth. But again, the idea is to get that meaning to come across in English as if the poem were written in English.

00;21;24;04 - 00;21;46;06
Michael Hagan
And so yeah, and I must say from a from reading the poems in English, I mean, you really accomplish that. They they read beautifully in English, even though it's not their original language. So. Well done. So, Michael, when you're setting poetry to music, do you feel like your music adds something new to the poems, or does it more just accentuate what is already there?

00;21;46;21 - 00;22;12;22
Michael Kregler
I would definitely pick the second of those two thoughts, but again, I just want to emphasize that faithfulness to the poem, you know, I want the poems to inspire the sound as much as possible, and I want to do my best to make it easy on the singer to help express the sentiment. So for lack of a better way of saying it, I don't want the music to sound so weird that the singer has to work twice as hard to sing this poem that wasn't even meant to be sung in the first place.

00;22;12;22 - 00;22;25;02
Michael Kregler
You know, I want to make it. I want to capture the mood and the pacing. I want to capture a mood and a pacing that would feel right to a native speaker and if that happens, then for me, the setting is successful.

00;22;26;05 - 00;22;33;21
Michael Hagan
So, Grace, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about your exciting recent news. I hear that you've got big plans for after graduation, don't you?

00;22;34;23 - 00;22;54;15
Grace Maffucci
Yes, I do. I will be an English teaching assistant in Mexico for the next academic year as part of the U.S. Student Fulbright program. And, you know, as Mike alluded to before, although no Mexican poet's made it into our our set.

00;22;54;15 - 00;22;54;21
Michael Kregler
Not.

00;22;54;21 - 00;23;05;16
Grace Maffucci
Intention, my my heart is sort of most drawn to Mexico. And that aspect of Latin American culture so I am extremely excited to be to be going there next year.

00;23;06;00 - 00;23;09;09
Michael Hagan
That is very exciting. What will you miss most about Providence College?

00;23;10;27 - 00;23;11;09
Grace Maffucci
Oof.

00;23;12;22 - 00;23;38;21
Grace Maffucci
I have to say, it's it's it's the people I know everyone says that, but specifically the people I get to see every day in the music department, especially the mike. You know, we've just done so much work together and over the past few years, you know, I've just so looked forward to going into the Smith Building and seeing my professors and friends, the music department and, you know, being able to have all these experiences.

00;23;38;21 - 00;23;56;03
Grace Maffucci
I mean, I don't think there's going to be another time in my life where I get to you know, put on a couple of recitals that I just choose to do. And I get support from, you know, the department to do so. And and, you know, I doubt that I'll have another opportunity to you know, to work with a composer and musician as incredible as Mike.

00;23;57;01 - 00;24;09;21
Michael Hagan
Now, Mike and another music faculty aren't the only faculty members that you've collaborated with on the foreign language side of your academics. You've had some pretty, pretty interesting faculty collaborations as well. I want to say anything about those.

00;24;10;07 - 00;24;45;18
Grace Maffucci
Absolutely. So in my junior year, I was awarded an undergraduate research grant and to study Afro-Cuban culture pre and post the Cuban Revolution through the visual performing and literary arts with Dr. Monica Kimmel, the Foreign Language Studies Department and she is of Cuban descent and being able to work with her to, to, to study all of that, you know, and speaking in Spanish the whole time with her, but also presenting work in both languages was really great for me in terms of, you know, my my linguistic experience.

00;24;45;18 - 00;25;12;15
Grace Maffucci
But also I was able to incorporate a lot of my music studies, and it became almost like an ethnomusicology project. And I got to present that sort of my completed research at the Big East Research Symposium at Madison Square Garden this past March. And I will be presenting it again at the student. The celebration of student creativity through the Center for Engaged Learning.

00;25;12;15 - 00;25;15;15
Grace Maffucci
So I've had a lot of really wonderful opportunities with that.

00;25;16;18 - 00;25;20;23
Michael Hagan
So Michael, what's what's one of your biggest takeaways from working with Grace on this project?

00;25;21;24 - 00;25;43;11
Michael Kregler
So I want to set this up with a short anecdote, although I can't remember the specific joke. I remember one time laughing at a joke. It might have been one that I told Grace or another column, a Colombian friend, but then someone asked, Oh, what's the joke in English? And as I started to translate it, the thought occurred to me, and this happens more often than you think, like, Oh, this is hard to translate.

00;25;43;11 - 00;26;06;07
Michael Kregler
I guess I really am bilingual because sometimes for someone who when you reach a certain point, you don't trust that you actually are bilingual. I'm just translating really quickly in my head. And then when you're posed with. Yeah, with the challenge of actually translating it, OK, I guess I am thinking purely in Spanish. So the takeaway there is that it's really important how well one speaks a language.

00;26;06;07 - 00;26;28;26
Michael Kregler
If they're going to write music using it or perform it as Greece did with the sets. And I've had choirs perform pieces that I wrote in Spanish and it was great. It is an experience, but long before we got to any sort of interpretation, we would just deal with the pronunciation. And that alone takes so much of your time that you just you just arrive at a different place and it just ends up being a different kind of experience.

00;26;29;24 - 00;26;48;02
Michael Kregler
So like I already said, Grace being bilingual made it just made it a very different experience. In fact, Grace and I have probably spoken in Spanish about 85%, 90% of the time when she came to PC because of course she she showed up and said, Oh, I speak Spanish. It's like, OK, we'll see how much that you speak.

00;26;48;02 - 00;27;03;13
Michael Kregler
And then it became clear to me that we could I still think of like people like walking down the hallway and other faculties are they speaking in Spanish? And it just has become normal. And then of course, if they join the conversation, we switch to English. But it's just and it's, it's honestly all the time that we would speak that way.

00;27;03;13 - 00;27;20;04
Michael Kregler
So so with Cantos de la Malala, it ended up being very rewarding and gratifying since I knew would be able to dove into the musical ideas and the character of the songs. The emotion of the text, that we'd be able to do that right away. So I'm just incredibly thankful that I got to do this project with Grace.

00;27;20;23 - 00;27;24;29
Michael Kregler
Although if I hadn't done it with Grace, then it just wouldn't have been the same project.

00;27;25;05 - 00;27;35;06
Michael Hagan
And Grace, before I ask you the same question about takeaways, I'm realizing I don't think that we ever gave a translation for Qantas del Amo. A lot of what does the title of your project translate to?

00;27;35;26 - 00;27;57;22
Grace Maffucci
Yeah, so Qantas, that Alma Lover, the title by MC basically translates to Songs of the Wing and Soul and that kind of alluding to our love for birds and, and that kind of the kind of the nature of the songs that are very focused on birds, but also what birds represent.

00;27;58;05 - 00;28;22;10
Michael Hagan
And another interesting thing in this conversation that I'm realizing, I went into this conversation and thinking that I had a pretty good understanding of how the roles were divided up in this. But the integration of your efforts is really something. I mean, I'll ask Grace, what about this? And you'll say, well, when Mike did this and Michael asked the same question, you'll say, when Grace did this, it really it seems like you two, you know, you were heavily involved in every part of the project.

00;28;22;10 - 00;28;28;17
Michael Hagan
Together, and that's really remarkable. So, Grace, same question for you. What are your biggest takeaways from working with Michael?

00;28;29;06 - 00;28;49;16
Grace Maffucci
I think, you know, I got a very unique experience to to kind of get in the mind of a composer because, you know, we we chose the poems together. But but Mike had a good eye for which poems were were going to be easier to set to music or that would be that would that would carry through in a musical setting.

00;28;50;06 - 00;29;08;25
Grace Maffucci
So I kind of learned about those distinctions and then, you know, kind of rehearsing the for the first time the pieces with Mike. And, you know, he would show me like how he had written some things for that certain word come out or like how I should perform it to, to bring out a certain word that, you know, maybe I wouldn't, maybe I would do, maybe I wouldn't do if I were just reading the poem.

00;29;09;19 - 00;29;29;09
Grace Maffucci
So I really got to kind of see how poetry in music, you know, it's not it's not just a matter of picking a poem and putting music to it. It's a it's a real, you know, combined effort of having like that musical background and also, you know, appreciating and understanding the poetry. So I felt like that was a huge one.

00;29;29;09 - 00;29;47;00
Grace Maffucci
And also, you know, what Mike spoke, spoke to you about that idea of being bilingual. You know, when we were translating the poems, I was like, this is so much harder than I thought it would be. And, you know, I realize kind of how it's one thing how grateful I am to, you know, to to be bilingual. And Mike has really helped me to get there.

00;29;47;18 - 00;30;04;09
Grace Maffucci
But, you know, just like the importance or the kind of beauty of languages that, you know, they aren't just able you are just able to to directly translate from one to the other. You know, each language carries its own character. And I think we've really been able to explore that with this project.

00;30;04;22 - 00;30;33;23
Michael Kregler
If I could just add to that and she mentioned the beauty of languages existed. That's a huge part of why this happened. The first place. But and what why this podcast is happening because we pushed to have the lecture in more hall, which seemed to spark the interest in this. That was in our minds an opportunity to do something interdisciplinary where although it was people appreciated this this set of songs, when we did a De Grace recital, we wanted to do it in a situation where some of the language faculty could attend and offer their thoughts.

00;30;33;23 - 00;30;41;06
Michael Kregler
And to see that people in the music department were doing something so seriously involved with with language and the Spanish language in particular.

00;30;41;06 - 00;30;45;02
Michael Hagan
So so we have time for one more song. Grace, what will you be performing last?

00;30;45;28 - 00;30;58;07
Grace Maffucci
Sure. So we will be performing Tommy Mano, which translates to Take My Hand by the Cuban female poet Nina Garcia Morales and Michael.

00;30;58;07 - 00;31;01;27
Michael Hagan
Anything that listeners should pay particular attention to in this composition?

00;31;02;14 - 00;31;26;11
Michael Kregler
Yes. In the piano you hear Bill Evans style voicing. So these are thick, lush, harmonic choices that you hear flavor the thing and you hear in the background. And there's also jazz like phrasing in the vocal line, which I knew Grace would be good at because of her background in jazz. And I knew this conceiving the song's character from the beginning.

00;31;26;16 - 00;31;41;20
Michael Kregler
You can hear this in the almost improvisatory quality of the lines in the free and speech like rhythms, as well as the amount of space that happens between each of the vocal entrances. So this sparseness that's created also ends up contributing to the song's mood.

00;31;41;29 - 00;31;47;26
Michael Hagan
All right. This is Tom Army Mano, performed by Grace Ma Foushee and composed by Michael Pregler.

00;32;27;15 - 00;32;52;04
Grace Maffucci

00;32;52;04 - 00;32;57;23
Grace Maffucci

00;32;58;06 - 00;33;18;04
Grace Maffucci

00;33;19;12 - 00;33;22;27
Grace Maffucci

00;33;25;07 - 00;33;26;23
Grace Maffucci

00;33;26;24 - 00;33;29;28
Grace Maffucci

00;33;36;21 - 00;33;40;18
Grace Maffucci

00;33;40;18 - 00;33;46;00
Grace Maffucci

00;33;51;06 - 00;34;52;24
Grace Maffucci

00;34;58;05 - 00;35;12;18
Michael Hagan
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Creators and Guests

Michael Hagan
Host
Michael Hagan
Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications
Chris Judge
Producer
Chris Judge
Multimedia and Live Event Producer
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