Earlier last year, 6-time Independent Music Award winner and founder of MPress Records, Rachael Sage, gave birth to a brand new and refreshing collaborative project, Poetica. This creatively aspiring collective takes Jazz, Spoken Word Poetry, Folk Music and builds up its own world of musical extraordinaire. Poetica quickly accelerated into a full-length studio album in the succeeding months. A new addition to the works of Poetica released today! Featuring a new music video for the track ‘engagement’. The track comes off of the self-titled, debut album, released earlier last year.
‘engagement’ compositionally falls into the realms of a modern-classical orchestration, textured by flairs of jazz motifs and ornamentation, layered underneath a wearingly sunken spoken word lyricism. Forming a swirling Kaleidoscope of sound, ‘engagement’ delves into the ever-questioning search of balance for self-love versus the devotion to a loved one. With its crawling tempo and ascending dynamics, the rising and cascading walking bass, lilting cyclical violins, ‘engagement’ is an exceptional and engaging insight into Poetica’s flourishing compositional ability.
The viscerally moving video centres itself around two contemporary dancers, Khadija Griffith and Ryan Steel. The pair follow an exquisitely and emotionally choreographed dance that visually expresses a struggle to comfortably fit together. Constantly weaving and twisting between one another, dancing between a whirl of fierce emotions, the interpretive routine heavily reflects upon the melancholic lyricism of the track. Directed by Sarah O’Gleby, the video aesthetically utilises its monochromatic black and white filter to really hone in the sentiments of the song.
Sage denotes,
“Poetica was so excited to work with Sarah O’Gleby on the “engagement” video because she is a strong, visionary creative who is so gifted at telling stories through movement. Her background as a choreographer is wildly impressive, but when we became aware of her working now as a director, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to collaborate. Our goal was to shoot a short film that was not only visually beautiful – while also being unfussy and essential – but that would distil the spoken-word content into a specific, personalised relationship for the viewer. The chemistry of our dancers was immediately striking, and they were both so brave in conveying the vulnerability this material required.”
Envisioned during a time of lockdown between Sage and her longtime cellist Dave Eggar (Esperanza Spalding, Paul Simon), Poetica quickly formed into an eclectic ensemble. With Sage mostly recording and producing the album, a diverse list of contributors aided in the album’s creation. This list included renowned klezmer clarinettist David Krakauer, jazz trumpet player Russ Johnson (Elvis Costello), violinist Kelly Halloran (Michael Franti), multi-instrumentalist Jack Petruzzelli (Rufus Wainwright), guitarists James Mastro (Patti Smith) and Gerry Leonard (David Bowie), and drummers Doug Yowell (Suzanne Vega) and Quinn (Janelle Monáe).
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