UCLA Center for the Art of Performance: Seth Parker Woods, Difficult Grace

“[A] cellist of power and grace.” —The Guardian

Recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award, cellist Seth Parker Woods has established a reputation as a versatile performer straddling several genres. Woods has worked with a wide variety of artists, ranging from the likes of Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter and Heinz Holliger to Peter Gabriel, Sting and Lou Reed.

An evocative, theatrical, and genre-bending collaboration with dancer Roderick George, Difficult Grace is a multimedia concert tour de force conceived by and featuring Woods in the triple role of cellist, narrator/guide, and movement artist, performing music written for and with Seth by Freida Abtan, Monty Adkins, Fredrick Gifford, Nathalie Joachim and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.

Heightened by film, spoken text, dance and visual artwork by Jacob Lawrence, Barbara Earl Thomas, Zoë McLean, and Freida Abtan, Difficult Grace creates a vivid sonic and visual canvas that draws inspiration from the Great Migration, the historic newspaper The Chicago Defender, immigration, and the poetry of Amiri Baraka and Dudley Randall.