Cellist Seth Parker Woods first presented an early version of his semi-autobiographical program “Difficult Grace” in February 2020, just prior to the collective isolation of Covid shutdowns. Despite the restricted movement that ensued in the early pandemic, he continued to zero in on his inspiration for the work: movement, and more specifically the relocation of thousands of Black people from the American South to major cities and northern states.
Now a multimedia, genre-crossing program to be presented in its premiere at the 92nd Street Y tonight, "Difficult Grace" surrounds Woods’s solo cello with film, spoken word and dance. Functioning as narrator, guide and movement artist, Woods is the de facto leader of a performance that includes music composed “for and with” him by Freida Abtan, Monty Adkins, Fredrick Gifford, Ted Hearne, Devonté Hynes (a.k.a Blood Orange), Nathalie Joachim and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. The “music vernacular,” as Woods put it, is “rooted in kind of Black folk music in America, as well as lots of jazz inflections.”