SET PIECES (2024)

Set Pieces is a new project created by Sophia to explore the interplay between words and music.

It presents a deep compositional dialogue between Sophia and collaborating musicians, where a sublime song cycle is created and composed in real-time. A libretto is specifically created for each performance, drawing on a rich body of poetry by a female-identifying twentieth-century poet.

In Set Pieces, Sophia creates show-specific compositions of immense emotional depth and harmonic colour. The project has features Sophia in collaboration with ECM recording artist andMercury Prize–nominated pianist, organist and composer Kit Downes. Sophia develops the text in collaboration with author and Yale University Press senior editor Jessie Kindig.

Past performances:

The Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts, New York – November 2024.
This New York premiere performance featured a cycle of prose poetry written by Argentinian Russian-Jewish poet Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972), in English translation by Yvette Siegert.

Operadagen Rotterdam Festival, De Doelen Concert Hall, Netherlands. 2021.
featured a cycle of prose poetry written by Polish philosopher and poet Devorah Vogel (1900–1942).