An interdisciplinary performance project celebrating Arbor Day 2025
Recital: From My Garden
with music, art, and words by Roselyn Hobbs
About the Project
From My Garden, an Arbor Day recital explores how all of music is connected to the natural world around us. The live perforamance was accompanied by a detailed program book that connected visual art with research-driven narratives about each composer’s relationship to nature. To create an immersive and impactful live experience, I collaborated with the Director of Grounds at the University of Hartford to bring plants onto stage and into the performance space. These plants were then planted on campus as part of the university’s spring landscaping efforts.
The poster illustrations represent important parts of my own personal “garden” experiences — a Staghorn Fern and Cattleya orchid from my father’s greenhouse, an iconc bronze statue by Aristide Maillol from a scultpure garden in Houston I frequented as a child, and the colorful yet ordinary bird that greets me each time I visit East Africa.
Performance excerpt:
Loop from Ligeti’s Sonata for Viola
“Gardens and gardening are for everyone - from the arboretums that study and cultivate plants from across the world, to sculpture gardens that inspire young artists, to patches of native plants that have taken root in broken up sidewalks. Today, when I think of my garden, it’s not one place, but rather a collection of experiences. Among these experiences are mornings spent admiring the dahlias of Elizabeth Park before a busy day of rehearsals, an introduction to the wonders of fjord microclimates at the Akureyri botanical garden, waking up early to observe and sketch the tiniest flowers of the Blue Ridge Mountains, solo birding in the woods of Boston’s Franklin Park, quiet moments along the Main River of Frankfurt during a long layover, and walks through the towering teak trees of Rao Forest at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.”
-Excerpt from the program book introduction