Music is Fire: The Transformative Power of IgniVox
by Cait Johnson

Not that long ago, Kathleen Mandeville was chaplain at Bard College, and before that, rector of St. Clement's Episcopal Church in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, where she created music and theater events to build community (the church's sanctuary doubled as an off-Broadway theatre). It really comes as no surprise, then, that for her music is far more than just frivolous entertainment, but a key to the ecstatic healing power of the sacred.

The ecstatic experience through music came to Mandeville early on. Her mother sang with the opera in Cincinnati, a town with a rich musical tradition, so she grew up surrounded by sound and singing. But she was six when she had what she now describes as her great aesthesis, her awakening to the power of music to move and transform. "My mother took me to the May Festival to hear a group of 300 people sing the Hallelujah chorus," she remembers. "I had never heard anything like it. There we were in this huge hall and this amazing sound was happening and the entire audience stood up — and so did every hair on my body. I was completely transported. I thought, this is it."

Her search to understand and replicate that powerful transformative experience has been at the heart of her healing work through the church. And now Mandeville, a resident of Tivoli for the last nine years, has forged a new venture out of her deep love of music: she is producer and artistic director of IgniVox Productions, a vital company dedicated to providing audiences with "a deep listen."

"I want to create a context for people to have a deep encounter with music," she says. "Making music and experiencing it synchronizes our bonding: people have entrained together with music for millennia. I see music as a way of healing our present cultural split by building a temple of sound." Her ideas are corroborated by writers like neuroscientist William Benzon, whose Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture has been one of her most recent sources of fascination.

Why "IgniVox?" The answer is significant: it comes from the Latin root of "igneous" and "ignite," meaning fire and "vox" which is voice. Put together, the idea is "music is fire" — that the audience gathers together around the fire of live music.

IgniVox has already offered a diverse and stimulating spectrum of musical experiences in two major events, both in the spectacular upstairs space at Milagros in Tivoli: the first, in July, was an evening of modern classical music (works by Ives, Crumb, and Ravel, among others), a showcase for emerging young talents, conductor Carmine Aufiero and singers Rebecca Schob and Alyson Voynick. The second concert, in October, featured three seasoned women performers who composed original works from sacred text: Ruth Cunningham, Julia Haines, and Zoe B. Zak.

There are other projects in the works as well. Mandeville envisions education as part of her mission to share the growing movement around music and healing, so a conference and lecture series is in the offing. She is also passionate about site-specific outdoor settings, and is considering an opera series that may include Wagner's Lohengrin at the Rosendale Mine or Aaron Copland's The Tender Land at a local farm.

Meanwhile, if you missed the first two concerts, you have another chance. A third event is planned for Saturday, December 6 at 7:30, again upstairs at Milagros, an evening of American music performed by two chamber groups, Art Song Nouveau and Battery Four, one a vocal, the other a percussion ensemble. Battery Four's program will include work by award-wining modern percussion composer Susan Harding. Art Song Nouveau will be performing December Songs, a poignant Manhattan-esque song cycle about love lost, as well as a scene from Romulus Hunt, an opera by Carly Simon. For more information, see the AboutTown calendar and/or call Mandeville at 757-2827. IgniVox events usually include complimentary food and a cash bar.

Kathleen Mandeville says, "Hearing music I love sung by people I love who love the music is the closest thing I know to heaven on earth." For me, there is no better way to ring in the holiday season than with the heavenly fire of IgniVox.