2022-23 Creative Reactions Contest: Award Winners

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CREATIVE REACTIONS CONTEST 22/23 WRITING & DRAWING


Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY CONCERTS

CREATIVE REACTIONS CONTEST

AWARD WINNERS

First Place (WRITING) Youngseo Lee ’25

Second Place (WRITING) Yaashree Himatsingka ’24

Honorable-Mention (DRAWING) Chas Brown ’26

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ABOUT THE 2022-2023

JAZZ VOCALIST CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT brought a new work inspired by author Toni Morrison’s archives to our Performances Up Close series in April 2023 — part of a campus-wide celebration of the former Princeton University Professor’s winning the Nobel Prize in Literature 30 years ago. Princeton University undergraduate and graduate students in attendance used her new composition as their own source of inspiration for creating a written or drawn contest submission. The anonymous entries were reviewed in two rounds of judging.

CREATIVE REACTIONS CONTEST A contest designed to capture the impact of music as perceived by Princeton University undergraduate and graduate students.

Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant

FINAL JURY (WRITING): Aleksandar Hemon, Princeton University Professor of Creative Writing Dorothea von Moltke, Princeton University Concerts Committee Member/Owner of Labyrinth Books Final Jury (Drawing): Marsha Levin-Rojer, Artist Tom Uhlein, Princeton University Concerts Graphic Designer

Sponsored by Princeton University Concerts

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Vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant with Painist Sullivan Fortner

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WINNERS Youngseo Lee ’25 Yaashree Himatsingka ’24 Chas Brown ’26


FIRST PLACE Youngseo Lee ’25

Haikus For Beauty After All dear toni —

only

dear jazz — dear jazz &

the edges went ablaze &

echoes — i mean dear memory —

pages have survived.

we wanted the high spelling & spilling elders from each seam, i came with bottled water

dear piano, light

notes, flat then floating, beauty easy after all. reflected glossy

dragging in the deep archives,

over the water

-graves. waiting for homecoming

quiet hollow shades,

through time & empire.

ribboned centuries & knots woven in boredom — the sound of it all often escapes me. dear email, dear paper page, dear shield of all ours.

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SECOND PLACE Yaashree Himatsingka ’24 Swamp

It’s finally warm in the second week of April. Gargoyles are drenched

forget that you love to sing. It drains you to write sentences or brush

into the sea. In this moment, the city ceases to be a city. In the blur of

in sunlight, the air is thick and sweet, and pink-cheeked freshmen are

your teeth, so you lie in bed, memorizing the drip stains on your ceiling,

monsoon and from a reasonable distance, the streetlamps along the

splayed on the grass. A graduate student reclines in a hammock slung

longing for rain. Numbness protects you awhile, perhaps because the

bay turn into stars.

between sycamores, luxuriating in the golden heat of afternoon, andVis

vastness of sorrow can’t be contained within the frame of your small

narrowly missed by a poorly lobbed frisbee.

body, but eventually you must find a way to feel again.

I’m not outside with everyone else. This is the third day I’ve

hurts the most. I shed the cocoon of my patterned blanket, noting

spent in my room, in bed, from fatigue or a lack of will to do otherwise.

dust and spores that fill the air this time of year. She glides between

that the floral sanganeri print is unusually vivid in this light – wide

Imagine, my bed grew legs and walked to Princeton Junction, put me

registers, inflecting her low, silvery timbre with the lightness of

leaves in a greenish cobalt, petals ruby-rich like merlot. I walk

on a train to the city, which promptly broke down and landed me in a

clouds, weaving a tapestry of sound that swathes each one of us. I

towards the window.

swamp in Metuchen.

drape myself in the velvet of her voice. As she turns, the vines from

What is your need to journey from color to color?

What does blue mean to you, and what can yellow do for you?

her robes climb up the balustrade, fresh green tendrils curling and

A green splodge of courtyard is visible through the glass. I

Blue and yellow don’t exist here. I’ll learn them again when

swaying in tempo. The room fills with whorls of honeysuckle, creamy

wipe it to reveal bluish lupines and soft white begonias; emerald green

I return to the Real World, when I’ve moved past this episode. In the

white and fragrant, as Cécile and Sullivan parley in legato, bending and

hostas with lavender blooms; blushing magnolias and scarlet-lipped

swamp, under the vacant pale of sky, the sludge is grey and wet and

buckling, swishing and stepping in syncopated synchrony. Heads tick,

cardinals; sapphire foxgloves and sunlit buttercups. The world is

glutinous and it pulls me down, down.

heels click. I breathe it all in from the balcony, and something

supersaturated with the coming of rain, and I hunger for color.

What does color mean to you when there’s so much unfixable

inside me thaws.

pain?

The world bursts forth in lurid color! Cécile’s upper I can’t move my limbs, my bed is damp, and the fan has

stilled to a whir. Squares of white sunlight on the wall make my eyes hurt, so I press them shut. Grey slithers into my thoughts. Grey

flourishes glimmer like raindrops on a wind, transporting me home, to Mumbai, to the first rain of monsoon. I’m standing on a sea-facing promenade. The wind brings

swamps up my mind, and as I fall into the slick walled well of myself,

the salty smell of the sea onto land, and I can feel its grit and spray. As

weeds coil me in a thicket, beetles whisper in my ear like the black grin

late afternoon relaxes into early evening, the sky is swept by mournful

of night, color becomes an impossible concept, and I resist nothing.

yellows, fiery pinks. A mango sun dips low beneath the smoggy horizon,

What does rain mean to you when all that you hoped for is dead?

sinking slowly into an Arabian Sea choked by sewage and cement.

The thing about depression is that it isn’t all roiling

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Cécile sings to me like spring rain, washing away the

Princeton. The steady thrum of rain outside my window. Cécile says to write when hope is dead, so I decide to write when it

Wetness on my cheek. Dark droplets begin to fall,

breakdowns, tears, and turbulence. At its worst, depression is stasis.

intermittently at first, then in thick, icy sheets that soak through my

As the color bleeds out of your world and greyness settles in, you

clothes and collect in an inky puddle at my feet, draining, eventually,

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HONORABLEMENTION Chas Brown ’26

Writing In The Dark

This work is called “Writing in the Dark,” and I was inspired by Cecile’s reference to the Georgia law that banned anyone from teaching slaves to read or write, and then listed in a starkly matter-of-fact manner the terrible punishments that were not only legal but legally mandated. Toni Morrison is one of the most proficient writers of our time, and her success as a black woman in this domain of writing that was so actively denied to black people in America for so long is incredibly striking. I thought that by putting some images of Morrison’s writings together in a piece with documents about slavery—along with imagery referencing writing and slavery generally—could remind viewers of this amazing achievement and the long way black people have come in America, but also of the fact that this history by no means entirely erased, or burned away, today. To call back to Cecile’s piece, there still exist glowing embers today from the scorching fires of slavery, and they continue to cast dark shadows. I try to play with fire and shadow and writing imagery in my composition. The stack of books, typewriter, and writing utensils reference writing. The figures in the bottom and the motif of fire and shadow could reference slavery. One note: I would have liked to have found and included more meaningful documents in the drawing, but due to my lack of time and understanding, I just used pictures of some of Toni Morrison’s writings, documents discussing the abolition of slavery, and of course in the background some writing that is similar to the Georgia law referenced in the song. Perhaps I could develop the piece further in the future.

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STUDENT

BIOS

FIRST PLACE

SECOND PLACE

HONORABLEMENTION

YOUNGSEO LEE ’25

YAASHREE HIMATSINGKA ’24

CHAS BROWN ’26

Writing first place-winner Youngseo Lee, Class of 2025,

Writing second place-winner Yaashree Himatsingka, Class

Drawing honorable-mention recipient Chas Brown, Class

of 2024, from Mumbai, India has always considered music to

of 2026, from Beaufort, SC, is researching economic and

be a source of community and healing. A pianist and singer,

social issues as part of his academic pursuits. Although

she has also served on the Princeton University Art Museum’s

he does not play an instrument, Chas has been eager to

Student Advisory Board. Passionate about climate change,

take advantage of opportunities on campus to learn about

Yaashree was one of twenty-four sophomores in her year

music, and entered the Creative Reactions Contest as a

to receive a Dale Summer Award to pursue a project about

fun music-to-art translation challenge. “Cécile McLorin

environmental education in Kanha National Park in Madhya

Salvant’s performance was very memorable, and the task

Pradesh, India. The judges were impressed by the way in

of brainstorming visual reactions to it made it even more

which Yaashree’s intimate essay lets us into the experience of

stimulating,” he shares. From a large, multi-talented

a sustained kind of suffering and shows us how, in opening

family that includes a twin sister and three younger triplet

oneself up to song, it’s possible to open back up to the world.

sisters, Chas has also written for The Daily Prince during his

Yaashree is pursuing a concentration in History.

first year on campus and does illustrations for the Nassau

from Chandler, AZ has enjoyed discovering and sharing a lot of wonderful new music by serving as a DJ for the WPRB 103.3 FM radio station on campus. Having played a handful of instruments when she was younger, she now considers writing to be the primary way in which she makes sense of the world. Youngseo regularly writes poetry and creative nonfiction; translates from Korean; and is the founding editor-in-chief of Pollux Journal, a literary magazine dedicated to multilingualism, an assistant poetry editor at Split Lip Mag, and an interviews editor and translator at The Hanok Review. Her writing has been nominated for the Best of Net, and recognized by Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist, and National YoungArts Foundation, among other distinctions. The judges selected her winning submission, “Haikus for beauty after all,” for the way in which it looks with every line-break and rhythm-change for an elusive “inherited sound”—the linked poems composing their own jazz riff in response to Cecile McLorin Salvant’s performance. Youngseo is pursuing a concentration in Electrical &

Weekly. The judges responded to the strong sense of force and movement in his drawing, and the way in which it referenced Morrison’s writing, glowing embers, and dark shadows depicted in the music at the concert. His drawing was inspired by Cécile McLorin Salvant reference to the Georgia law that banned anyone from teaching slaves to read or write.

Computer Engineering.

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puc.princeton.edu

SINCE 1894, the music of history’s most revered composers has been performed by the world’s most celebrated artists at Princeton University. In its 129-year history the series has presented many of the classical music world’s most important musicians, including violinist Isaac Stern, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the Budapest String Quartet and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy. Today, an extraordinary roster of musicians make their Princeton debuts each season and join this pantheon. Among them are some of the most highly regarded artists of our time...young musicians on the cusp of sensational careers...and riveting performers pioneering new forms of expression.

Marna Seltzer Director Alexis Branagan Communications & Events Coordinator Lou Chen Neighborhood Music Project Kerry Heimann Operations & Patron Services Manager Dasha Koltunyuk Marketing & Outreach Manager Deborah Rhoades Accounts Manager Tom Uhlein Graphic Designer

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