Chicago’s revered Black chamber music collective D-Composed collaborates with South Side native poet, songwriter, and performing artist Jamila Woods to present the artist’s first public sound-healing experimentation, the listening field, in partnership with the Kehrein Center for the Arts. Creating a space for healing and reflection, the event combines the music of living Black composers, sound-healing instruments, and original poetry, for a participatory experience for rest, introspection, and liberation. Serving the West Side community and beyond, the event offers a one-time-only meditative experience on Sunday, April 27, from 5-6:30 p.m. at the Kehrein Center for the Arts (5628 W. Washington Blvd.) in the Austin neighborhood. The event is free and open to the public, with limited space capacity. Pre-registration is required at dcomposed.com. In the event of selling out, a waiting list will be available on the website.
Photos l-r: Jamila Woods, courtesy of D-Composed. Participants and the ensemble at D-Composed’s Freedom Lullabies event at The Nap Ministry, photo by Sulyiman Stokes.
As the kick-off event for the Kehrein Center’s book club series “Our Nature: The West Side Reading Project,” the event draws themes from Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God, such as independence, growth, and rebirth. By blending live music, sound-healing instruments, and poetic prose, Woods and the ensemble create a sonic journey that honors how land serves as a resource for healing, while acknowledging the historical impacts of slavery and institutional harm that have disrupted humans’ connection to land and nature. The artists welcome participants to re-engage with the land of their own local parks and nature, rediscover and redefine their collective identity, and debunk the uncharacteristic images historically superimposed on the Austin community.
The event features works by living composers and improvisations from the ensemble, while Woods narrates and experiments with sound-healing instruments. The list of composers includes ayanna woods, joy guidry, Sharon Udoh, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and more. Woods will use instruments such as crystal sound bowls, voice, and others to create an immersive experience of sound healing–a holistic therapy using sound vibrations to promote relaxation, reduce stress, and improve overall well-being. Audiences are encouraged to take up the aisle space between seats to lie down and unfold, and can bring their own blankets and other comfort supplies. At the end, an open dialogue will be facilitated for them to share experiences.
Kori Coleman, Founder and Executive/Artistic Director of D-Composed, shares what it means to collaborate with Woods: “D-Composed has a long-standing relationship with Jamila, dating back to the ensemble’s first televised performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert show in 2021. We have always wanted to further our collaboration for the local audience, so when Jamila suggested a program for the West Side, a natural partnership formed. For this special healing experience, we worked together to select and pair music and poetry by Black artists, in order to explore the rich and complex relationship between Black people and the land. We hope the event will hold space for attendees to reflect and integrate land and nature into their own healing journeys.”
Jamila Woods shares what is special about working with D-Composed, how she feels about her first public presentation of sound-healing, and her vision for the event: "I’m really excited to collaborate with D-Composed for this unique immersive listening event combining poetry, live music, and sound healing. D-Composed uplifts and honors the legacy of Black composers, and I love how their performances often weave in poetry and seminal texts by Black authors. This will be my most in-depth collaboration with D-Composed and very meaningful to me as my first public presentation of sound healing. Our goal is to create a restorative and reflective space for Black people, inviting participants to explore how the land, and sound itself, can be a source of grounding, healing, and ancestral connection.”
About D-Composed
Founded in 2017, D-Composed is a Black chamber music collective on a mission to uplift and empower society through the music of Black composers. The Chicago-based creative incubator acts as a bridge between the past and present to the future of representation, music-centered experiences, and the communal power of Black composers and their impact. African Americans make up only 2.4% of American orchestras, and two-thirds of orchestra repertoire still primarily features compositions from deceased white males. Meanwhile, D-Composed is 100% composed of Black musicians, and the repertoire exclusively features the works of Black composers.
At a D-Composed program, it’s no surprise to see worlds collide - to hear the sounds of Florence Price in the same program as Solange. Holding the door open to a historically excluded experience, D-Composed is caring for communities of color via culture and creativity giving access and exposure to Black creativity, Black culture, and Black life through thoughtful programming, events, and content. As the only all-Black ensemble and the only ensemble that focuses exclusively on the works of Black composers in Chicago, D-Composed partners with institutions with a proven commitment to communities of color. It made history as the first classical music ensemble for Today at Apple on Michigan Ave and have collaborated with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, CSO MusicNOW, The Obama Foundation, Sundance Institute x Chicago, Chicago Humanities Festival, Steppenwolf Theater Lookout series, The Rebuild Foundation, Arts & Public Life with the University of Chicago, and are extending their reach beyond Chicago with partnerships with The Kaufman Music Center in New York and TUCCA in Brazil.
About Jamila Woods
Jamila Woods is a poet, songwriter, and performing artist from the South Side of Chicago. Her first solo album, HEAVN was released by JagJaguwar Records in 2017 to critical acclaim. Her sophomore offering, LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019), features 12 tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced the creator’s life and work — including James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.
Woods surrounds herself with things she loves, things like Lucille Clifton’s poetry, her grandmother’s handwriting or the late 90s alt-rock of Incubus. An internationally touring artist, she has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CBS This Morning, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Bonobo, Common, Chance the Rapper, Brittany Howard, Macklemore, and many others. Her most recent project, Water Made Us, was released by JagJaguwar Records in October 2023. An award-winning poet, Woods’ work often blurs boundaries between poem and song. Her poetry has been published in POETRY, Poets.org, and The Offing, and was featured in the 2020 Library of America anthology “African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song.” She has been awarded writing residencies at Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, BLKSPACE on Ryder Farm, and Civitella Ranieri. In 2022 she served as artist-in-residence at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University, teaching workshops on poetry, songwriting and live performance.