Here I Am: Choral Music of Jocelyn Hagen (album)

When I first began working on The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, I didn’t realize how much it would transform my career and outlook on what music could be. I wanted to bring Leonardo’s notebooks to life—not just through his drawings and words, but through sound, light, and movement. Using the latest video-syncing technology, I designed the visuals and music together so that the accompanying film in concert follows the music, not the other way around. Every note, image, and phrase is connected.

The premiere in 2019 was an unforgettable moment and the response since then has been beyond anything I imagined. Notebooks has now been performed well over fifty times around the world in the last six years—from Carnegie Hall to tours in Great Britain, Croatia, and Sweden—and continues to reach new audiences every season. Some singers have performed it five or more times in different cities. It’s also been deeply moving to hear from performers and listeners alike who say the piece opened a new window into Leonardo’s brilliance and maybe even into their own creativity.

The project led to my 2019 TED Talk— Composing for Choir, Orchestra, and Video Projections—and even received “Best Choral Performance” from Classical Voice for a Los Angeles presentation with Vox Femina. Conductors, critics, and audiences describe Notebooks as expansive, melodic, and full of energy, but to me it’s ultimately about curiosity and that spark of wonder that drives us to keep learning, practicing, and imagining—just like Leonardo.

After one of the early performances, Eric Holtan approached me with a new idea—to write a piece celebrating the women’s suffrage movement and the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020. That conversation planted the seed for Here I Am.

I wanted it to be beautiful, powerful, and honest, to honor the countless women throughout history who fought for equality, but also to recognize that the fight isn’t over. I crafted the libretto from the words of 47 inspiring women from across the world and across time. I realized early on that I not only wanted to hear their words but to see their faces. Live-concert projections in this work feature newly created portraits produced by seven women artists from around the world whose art brings these women to life in a personal and dynamic way.

Here I Am feels like a deepening of my own musical voice: it’s lush and sweeping without shying away from difficult truths or sounds. Collaborating with the remarkable soprano Susanna Phillips and the Tucson Girls Chorus adds such soul and brilliance to the score. Although the pandemic delayed the premiere until 2022, the message of the piece feels as timely as ever: it’s about being seen, heard, and standing proudly in one’s own identity.

Eric Holtan and True Concord gave me the freedom to explore these ideas in every way I imagined, and, through this recording, are bringing both of these works to a much wider audience. This is the greatest gift for any composer.

Together, these two choral symphonies form the bookends to a journey of discovery, for they helped me become the composer I was destined to be. Notebooks celebrates the human drive to know, explore and question. Here I Am celebrates the human right to be—to exist fully and authentically in the world. Thank you for listening to this music. I’m endlessly grateful to the performers, conductors, artists, and audiences who bring this music to life. I hope you feel some of the same curiosity, courage, and wonder that inspired me to write them. —Jocelyn Hagen

True Concord Voices & Orchestra

Founded in 2004 by Founding Music Director Eric Holtan, the Tucson, Arizona-based True Concord Voices & Orchestra made its New York City debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in September 2015 with Mozart’s Requiem and Stephen Paulus’s Prayers and Remembrances. That same year, True Concord debuted on the international stage with its first album on Reference Recordings®, Far in the Heavens: Choral Music of Stephen Paulus, which received a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance, while the late Stephen Paulus won the GRAMMY® for Best Classical Contemporary Composition posthumously. True Concord received its second GRAMMY® nomination in 2024 for A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad, also on Reference Recordings®.

Tucson Girls Chorus

Tucson Girls Chorus provides an outstanding choral education program for girls in grades K-12, with additional co-ed programs to serve all of Tucson’s youth. Their mission is to prepare a diverse group of young women to be confident leaders through participation in a well-constructed educational program that emphasizes music, performance, leadership training and community service.

Susanna Phillips

Soprano Susanna Phillips is one of today’s most sought-after musicians celebrated for her compelling stage presence. Her career highlights include appearances at The Metropolitan Opera in more than eleven roles, the premiere of Awakenings (Rose) at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Renée Fleming. She has sung leading roles with Boston Baroque, including Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare and the title role in Agrippina. Additional operatic appearances include Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, Dallas Opera, and Gran Teatre del Liceu.

Deeply committed to symphonic repertoire, Ms. Phillips has collaborated with esteemed orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and her native Huntsville Symphony Orchestra. A devoted chamber musician, she has presented a tribute to Clara Schumann at the Library of Congress and appeared with Washington Performing Arts in a program co-curated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Her honors include the Beverly Sills Artist Award and the Laffont Competition from The Metropolitan Opera, as well as Operalia, the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition, and top prizes from the American Opera Society and the Musicians Club of Women. An alumna of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center, she holds both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School.

Visual artists/filmmaker collaborators: Isaac Gale, Joseph Midthun, and Justin Schell

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (2019) 34:58

1. Painting and Drawing 4:52
2. Practice 1:29
3. Ripples 4:50
4. The Greatest Good 2:15
5. The Vitruvian Man 5:02
6. Invention 4:45
7. Nature 4:12
8. Perception 2:39
9. Look at the Stars 4:54

Here I Am (2021) 43:01

Narrators (in order of first appearance): Naomi DeVries Pomerantz, Kerry Ginger, Chelsea Helm, Emily Marvosh

10. There is a Girl 9:29
11. The Other Side 13:55
12. Voting for Ourselves 6:42
13. Write the Story 12:55
Trio (in order of appearance): Emily Lau, Julie Bosworth, Margot Rood