Tala is thrilled to present Scores, a solo exhibition by anti-disciplinary artist and DJ Jesús Hilario-Reyes (NYC). Opening Thursday, September 17, 5-8PM

In the late 1960’s classical composer & jazz musician Frederick Tillis took a step toward composing the form of the spiritual as a written score. Trained in the conventions of European-centered arrangement styles, his chamber works are infused with the harmonic dissonance of jazz and Black vernacular music traditions, arriving at a timbre echoing the persistent candor of pioneering Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Fully embodied in his work Five Spirituals for Chorus and Brass Ensemble (1967), a five-movement choral work whose lyrics and cadence draw from Brooks’ The Second Sermon on the Warpland. Tillis’ faltering notes intersect and blend with Brooks’ sonorous phrases, at once melding into a singular voice: “Salve salvage in the spin [...] / prop a malign or failing light / but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth.”

Within contemporary underground club culture, modalities of whirlwind as refuge emerge through conditions of enmeshment. Here, indeterminacy is inherent. As bodies flicker in and out of sight within an engulfing fog on the dancefloor, fugitivity becomes footwork underneath the DJ and lighting technician’s unyielding choreography. Collective embodiment, intensified through darkness and density, is not a destination but a “no place,” - an impossible site.

As if standing amidst the cacophony of the hurricane itself, Hilario-Reyes’ works recall The Second Sermon on the Warpland’s final injunction: “It is lonesome, yes / For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live / Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.” And in fallenness, freedom arises in the erasure of a singular intactness, unintelligibilty welcomes us in.

Accompanying zine designed by Stella Rae Binion