Abbess-composer Kassia of Byzantium (9th-c.) is one of the incandescent women religious creative artists featured on Hazelnut Road, my multi-sited ethnographic performance project. I try to access historical women’s great works by learning from those that preserve and interpret their legacies to-day through manuscripts and oral tradition. I pilgrimaged to Kassia’s historical homeland of Constantinople, now modern-day Istanbul, to walk in her footsteps. I lived with Orthodox nuns in Greece to imagine the rhythms of her monastic life. Alongside practitioners of Byzantine chant, I learned to read the ancient notation and listen to the living tradition that together carry her music and texts to us.
Explore the short dance film by co-creators Noah Amir Arjomand (direction and photography), Mariia Bakalo (choreography and dance) and Brett Umlauf (story and sound), slated to premiere at the 2024 Newport Beach Film Festival.
Watch the performance talk that Dr. Alexander Lingas and I gave for the Medieval Studies Institute at Indiana University (Bloomington), January 25, 2022.
KASSIA modes of access
Watch my 15-minute talk on methods for approaching Kassia’s music, presented for Bahcesehir University Conservatory (Istanbul), March 30, 2022.
(Re)formed Icon: Kassia…in her Hymn to Saint Pelagia
Watch my presentation for Women in Art and Music: An Early Modern Global Conference, hosted jointly by The Juilliard School and the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. (coming soon)
KASSIA in Kyiv
Online speaking engagement at Ukrainian National Academy of Music (Kyiv) as part of Dr. Maria Alexandru’s (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki) team of Chrysorrhemon Palaeography Group and St. Anysia Byzantine Choir: Signs and Sounds in the Compositions of the Famous Byzantine Poetess and Composer St. Kassia the Nun, April 4-6, 2023
KASSIA and sisters
SUORE Project brings Kassia to the SoHIP (Society for Historically Informed Performance) audiences in Boston, Andover and Lincoln, Massachusetts, 8th, 9th and 10th of August 2023.
Read about my ongoing work based on my ethnographic research on Kassia perceptions and performance as a 2022-2023 Fulbright Fellow in Greece and Turkey.