Amanda Gookin - Forward Music Project 2.0: in this skin (2021) Hi-Res

TAfter a powerful first season exploring a wide range of issues facing women and girls around the globe in March 2017, cellist Amanda Gookin returns for an all–new season featuring all–new works. As a 2018-2019 National Sawdust Project-in-Residence, the Forward Music Project 2.0, in this skin, will focus on the first-person perspectives of women. Gookin is commissioning six composers to write new works for solo cello highlighting issues of sex positivity, trans rights, pleasure and pain, gender nonconformity, fashion and dignity, hysteria, BDSM, and more. Several of these pieces will push the boundaries of traditional cello writing, incorporating toys, staging effects, and even Gookin’s voice.

In addition to the final performance, the residency will include workshops with the composers to give insight into their creative process and staging workshops with former National Sawdust Artist-in-Residence Helga Davis, among other events. With the Forward Music Project 2.0, Amanda Gookin takes a major step forward in her mission to make classical music an active force for political good in the world at large.

Amanda Gookin, cello