Brooklyn's Permanent Moves will release a concept album for their new work Don't Forget Us: A Chekhovian Song Cycle April 12.
Using the work of Anton Chekhov as inspiration, the album will feature Chris Giarmo (American Utopia), Jessie Shelton (Hadestown), Karl Blau, Starr Busby, and more in collaboration with creators Shane Chapman and Julia Sirna-Frest.
An idie-electro-folk-rock duo, Chapman and Sirna-Frest founded Permanent Moves in 2016 as a way to blend eclectic orchestration and harmony with inspirational text. Don't Forget Us will feature translations by Laurence Senelick.
Said Chapman and Sirna-Frest, "For the past 7 years we have been working on and performing these songs in a myriad of ways from a 16 person band at Ars Nova to a duo set in a living room in Vancouver, Canada. We have both been drawn to Chekhov’s work because it speaks to the questions we often sit around talking about. What are the lives not lived? How does one survive the monotony of everyday life? Failure, living up to one’s potential, longing for a bigger life. You know, the hits of the human condition.
"This album feels very ripe for this moment because the past few years has led many people to reassess their lives, to question whether they’ve made the right choices. For us in the performing arts, the entire industry was yanked away and it feels like a chance to ponder our existence, a very Chekhovian thing to do. His work reminds us that life is lived in the in-between moments. Huge things happen in a Chekhov play—people die, love is lost, a gun might go off—but the focus is watching the characters muck through it as we all must do. We’re hoping to give people a good soundtrack for their personal mucking. We can all be uplifted by a good horn section, right? As Charles McNulty put it so elegantly: 'Chekhov’s art doesn’t seek to correct but merely to point out that as we’re dreaming of better days our real lives are quietly unfolding.'"
Permanent Moves will celebrate the release of Don't Forget Us: A Chekhovian Song Cycle with a concert at Brooklyn's Sultan Room April 16. For more information, visit PermanentMoves.com.
