Voices Reclaimed: Sheila Bristow's Grimké Songs

At Rising Waters Collective, we believe that music is especially vibrant when it lifts voices that have waited too long to be heard. It is both a commitment and a privilege to champion the works of living composers, and especially those rooted right here in the Pacific Northwest. We are proud to present Grimké Songs, a new song cycle by PNW composer Sheila Bristow, featured on our upcoming immersive concert, Echoes of Her.

Grimké Songs sets the luminous poetry of Angelina Weld Grimké, a playright, poet, and educator whose complexity and courage have only grown more resonant with time. Born in Boston on February 27, 1880, Grimké was the daughter of Archibald Grimké, who had been born enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, and Sarah Stanley Grimké, a white woman and the daughter of an abolitionist. She was named after her great-aunt, the abolitionist and suffragist Angelina Grimké Weld, and grew up in liberal, aristocratic Boston society.

Grimké's first poems appeared in the early 1900s in publications including Colored American Magazine and The Boston Evening Transcript, and her work was featured in landmark Harlem Renaissance anthologies edited by figures such as Countee Cullen and Alain Locke. In recent decades, her poetry has experienced a revival, with particular attention to her erotic love sonnets addressed to women - leading to new recognition for Grimké as a lesbian poet. She died on June 10, 1958.

Bristow's song cycle breathes new musical life into Grimké's intimate, aching verse - a perfect pairing of a poet who wrote ahead of her time with a composer who honors that legacy with fresh intention. Soprano Ellaina Lewis brings both to vivid life in performance.

To hear directly from the artists, watch our video interview with composer Sheila Bristow and soprano Ellaina Lewis, both of whom appear on Echoes of Her, above.

Echoes of Her is an immersive concert experience celebrating the voices of women composers and poets across history.

March 8, 3:30pm

ArtLove Salon, downtown Seattle

We hope you'll join us.

Learn more about the concert HERE