Look Homeward, Angel by Cellista

Cellista's Transfigurations
COMPOSED BY Cellista & Peter Colclasure
YEAR COMPOSED 2016
LYRICS Cellista
INSTRUMENTATION Violin, viola, cello, piano, glockenspiel, soprano, rapper, beatboxer
RAP LYRICS DEM ONE (Demone Carter)
PERFORMED BY The Juxtapositions Chamber Ensemble
Cellista, cello
Kristina Dutton, violin 1
Mia Bella D’Augelli, violin 2
Ondine Young, viola
Peter Colclasure, piano
Tim DeCillis, glockenspiel
DEM ONE, rapper
Melissa Wimbish, soprano
Track XI (Julia Ramos), beatboxer
David Möschler, conductor

DURATION 6’28”

Look Homeward, Angel is a work derived from Cellista’s earlier album, Finding San Jose. It’s opening two bar repeated passage is taken from the opening bars of La Folia. The piece, originally written for her friend and first cross-disciplinary collaborator the visual artist Tulio Flores is found here on Transfigurations as an expansion of that original motif. With the aid of composer Peter Colclasure, the piece is transformed into a larger chamber work that incorporates elements of minimalism, hip hop, and baroque figures into a storytelling canvas for lyricist DEM ONE and Cellista to use to comment on their home of San Jose and the Bay Area at large.

The written work Border Crossings found within this book, fits into this piece. Written at the bequest of Cellista, philosopher Frank Seeburger uses motifs from Look Homeward, Angel and the original work to express the movement of bodies and ideas across borders. The piece is informed by Cellista’s work with the Bay area hip hop group The Coup. In 2014, she performed as a part of Classical Revolution at the hip hop group’s multimedia work Shadowbox which premiered at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The work is informed especially by The Coup’s front man Boots Riley.