Event

Art | Song Salon: Saudade

Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something, somewhere, or someone that one loves. Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.

A word with layers of complexity, saudade plays with perspectives on time: the past, present, and future. Yet what are our memories of the past, or projections of the future? Are those memories reality, or simply what we choose to remember? When we yearn for the times gone by, what are we yearning for? In our ever-evolving neighborhoods, city, country, and planet, how can we preserve our communities and our humanity?

Jessica Wan, soprano, Craig Perry, guitar, and Tim Eischens, piano, will perform an eclectic program of songs by Brahms, Barber, Takemitsu, and Villa-Lobos, plus original music by Craig Perry.