About
Diagenesis Duo is Heather Barnes (soprano) and Jennifer Bewerse (cello). Since their founding in 2010 at a soundSCAPE residency in Italy, Diagenesis Duo has explored the possibilities of chamber music for the voice and cello through commissions, experimental music, and the limited but stunning body of preexisting works for soprano and cello. As a result they have premiered several works including James Kallembach’s concert-length work, Eleven Songs on Poems of Anne Bradstreet (2011), Stephen Lewis’s con mortuis (2013), and Marti Epstein’s Different Kinds of Light (2016). The 2018 release of their debut album, Hands and Lips of Wind, features three premiere recordings of works commissioned by Diagenesis and Harrison Birtwistle’s Nine Settings of Lorine Niedecker.
The duo has been awarded the Myrna Loy Center Grants to Artists Award (2013 for their Montana Concert Tour), an Earle Brown Foundation Grant (2016 for their site-specific concert at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts), and recording grants from the University of California, San Diego (2013 and 2014 to record their debut album). Their work has also given them the opportunity to collaborate with institutions such as The Banff Centre for Performing Arts, the University of Florida and of South Florida, University of Montana, Music from Salem, Boston Conservatory, and as the guest artists in residence at UC San Diego’s Springfest.
Diagenesis has worked extensively with school children, and, as a result of their belief that new music allows children to tap into their natural creativity, they have developed NewSonics, a weeklong new music workshop for kids. NewSonics features composition, improvisation, instrument making, and performance, and was awarded a NewMusic USA Project Grant to commission Adam Tinkle to write Sympathetic Magic, a five-movement work for cello, soprano, and improvising children’s ensemble. In 2016, Diagenesis partnered with the Holter Museum and Cohesion Dance to host the Helena InterArts Summer Workshop, an integrative music, dance, and visual art workshop awarded a Montana Arts Council Artists in Schools and Communities Grant.
Dedicated to providing young people and the community with musical access, Diagenesis aims to perform concerts that facilitate a dialogue between the audience and performers with the goal of building an empowered audience for contemporary music.
