IN HER VOICE
An Interdisciplinary Performance for the Frist Art Museum
A Response to In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century
January 29 – April 26, 2026 | Ingram Gallery
For Lawson White, Ann Sensing, Banning Bouldin & New Dialect
10 Performers | Live Electronics | Analog Synthesizer | Pedal Steel | Voice | Dance
Total Duration: 2 Hours
Overview
In Her Voice is a two-hour interdisciplinary performance work for ten performers, live electronics, analog synthesizer, pedal steel, voice, and dance. Created for Still (Lawson White and sound artist Ann Sensing) and choreographer Banning Bouldin’s New Dialect, the work is conceived as a direct artistic response to the Frist Art Museum’s exhibition In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century.
The exhibition celebrates the achievements of 28 Nashville-based women artists across nearly 100 works of painting, sculpture, textiles, and installation, organized into four thematic galleries: Materiality and Memory, Cultural Foundations, Scenes and Dreams, and Patterns and Abstraction. In Her Voice proposes to activate these gallery spaces through embodied sound and movement, giving literal voice to the artistic vision on the walls.
The performance unfolds in three acts. A thirty-minute electronic introduction establishes an ambient sonic frame using field recordings of the exhibition’s materials and the voices of its artists. The central sixty minutes comprise eleven movements in which nine dancer-performers occupy the four gallery spaces, playing symphonic gongs, practicing vocal toning rooted in ancient spiritual traditions, and moving through choreography that responds to the art in each room. They gradually migrate toward the gallery’s center, gathering in community. A thirty-minute electronic coda weaves recordings captured during the live performance with those from the introduction, symbolizing the integration of past, present, and future feminine voices.
At a Glance
Ensemble: 1 electronic musician (Moog Minimoog Model D, pedal steel, laptop, live recording) + 9 dancer-vocalist-percussionists
Duration: 2 hours (30-min introduction, 60-min central work in 11 movements, 30-min coda)
Space: Ingram Gallery — performers occupy all four thematic rooms plus a central gathering space
Instruments: Symphonic gongs, koshi chimes, shruti box, tongue drum/handpan, crystal tuning fork, small stereo PA with speakers in each gallery room
Audience Experience: Immersive and ambulatory — visitors move freely through the gallery during the introduction and coda. During Movements 1–11, silence from the audience is strongly suggested, allowing the acoustic voices and gongs to fill the space without competing sound. Visitors may continue to move through the galleries but are encouraged to do so quietly and with intention.
Why This Exhibition, Why This Team
In Her Place responds to Linda Nochlin’s 1971 provocation, “Why have there been no great women artists?” by filling the Frist’s largest gallery with the work of women who have shaped Nashville’s visual arts community. In Her Voice extends that response into the dimension of time-based art — sound, movement, and breath — activating the exhibition as a living, communal experience rather than a static one.
This collaboration brings together three Nashville-rooted practices uniquely suited to the task. Still (White and Sensing) merges professional music production with sound healing, having performed immersive experiences across Nashville and beyond. Banning Bouldin, a Juilliard-trained choreographer who founded New Dialect in 2013, has spent over a decade building Nashville’s contemporary dance ecosystem through interdisciplinary, site-specific work. Together, this team has the artistic depth and logistical experience to realize a large-scale, gallery-embedded performance with care for both the art on the walls and the audience in the room.
Artistic Vision
In Her Voice is a work of juxtapositions: modern and ancient, subtle and powerful, masculine and feminine, resonance and dissonance, silence and expression, comfort and discomfort. It explores the voice of the feminine and the role of the divine feminine in our culture — past, present, and future.
The Masculine Frame: Introduction and Coda
The work begins and ends with a single electronic musician at the gallery entrance — a masculine frame holding space for the feminine center. Modern electronic instruments are used with intention: they place us in the current moment while embodying a duality. The electronics serve a supportive role, but their prominent position at the threshold of the gallery also speaks to the ways patriarchal culture has occupied space — literally and figuratively — leaving fewer gallery walls and public forums for women’s voices.
In the introduction, the electronic musician creates ambient music woven from recordings of the materials in the exhibited works and the actual voices of the exhibiting artists. This sonic tapestry establishes a frame for the work’s central characters: the women artists in the exhibition, and the performers giving them voice today.
In the coda, the electronic musician weaves recordings captured throughout the gallery during the live performance with those used in the introduction. Women of the past, present, and future stand together in sound. The masculine role shifts from frame to steward — leading by example in the act of holding space for the feminine to speak, express, and take center stage.
The Feminine Center: Movements 1–11
Nine performers occupy the gallery, one at the center and two in each of the four thematic rooms. Over the course of eleven movements, they move their bodies and use their voices in ways that reflect the artistic voice of the artists whose work surrounds them. They play symphonic gongs and practice vocal toning — sustained vowel sounds rooted in ancient spiritual chanting traditions (Tibetan, Mongolian, Vedic) and energy medicine, aimed at activating the nervous system and aligning the body’s energy. In this context, vocal toning carries a dual intention: its traditional restorative meaning, and the act of giving voice to the artists on exhibit. Words are intentionally omitted. Only tones are used, leaving space for the meaning of the art on the very walls where this work is performed.
The symphonic gongs are ancient instruments forged from the earth — vast and powerful in voice, full of potential to scream and shriek, but also capable of massive, deep, complex tones when given space to simply speak. In this work, their full power is never realized. The dynamics bring each gong to the edge of opening up fully, giving the listener an awareness of immense potential held in restraint. The metaphor is deliberate.
What is a woman’s place?
What is the power of a woman’s voice?
What is held in a woman’s silence?
Movement begins as Mother Earth awakens her bodies. New moon becomes full. Expression emerges from the womb. Voices emerge. The ancient practice of vocal toning invokes the power of the divine feminine through the human voice — not singing, but an expression of sound that activates the nervous system to regulate herself, her children, and those in her field. This toning is both utilitarian and an offering.
A mother’s voice soothes and comforts. The voice of an oppressed woman finally erupts when called upon to protect herself or her loved ones. Yet she has been expected to use her voice primarily to soothe and regulate — herself. Often this is all. Often that is what we are comfortable with. These are the choices when there is no choice. In Her Voice gives space for the beauty and the power.
Over the course of the work, the performers move through the audience, through this society, gathering in the center to hold each other, protect each other, cry and call out together. No longer in silence, these voices and bodies express themselves and bear witness to one another. They hold each other in their voice.
In Her Voice.
The Creative Team
Lawson White — Composer, Electronic Musician
Lawson White is a Nashville-based producer, recording engineer, sound designer, composer, and performer with over 30 years of industry experience. A graduate of Yale School of Music (MM) and Eastman School of Music (BM), his credits span commercial and classical worlds — from Twenty One Pilots, Jamie xx, Shania Twain, Brittany Howard, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Billy Strings, and Béla Fleck to collaborations with David Lang, Bryce Dessner (The National), John Zorn, Zeena Parkins (Björk), Kronos Quartet, yMusic, Matmos, International Contemporary Ensemble, ACME, NOW Ensemble, and the Metropolitan Opera. A former member of So Percussion and Alarm Will Sound, Lawson performs regularly with the Nashville Symphony. His recordings have been nominated for and won GRAMMY Awards. He is also a certified sound bath practitioner trained under Sara Auster, and operates The Parlor on Music Row. As one half of Still, Lawson brings live electronic performance, analog synthesis, and pedal steel into immersive sound environments.
Ann Sensing — Sound Artist
Ann Sensing is a certified sound practitioner, sound artist, meditation instructor, and intuitive healer based in Nashville. She is the founder of Sound Mind & Body in East Nashville, where she leads sound healing classes, mentors practitioners, and has developed sound healing programs for public schools, prisons, and end-of-life care. Ann trained under Sara Auster in New York City and has facilitated sound experiences at Madison Square Garden, One World Trade Center, and Bonnaroo. She appeared playing crystal bowls on Brittany Howard’s album What Now. As one half of Still, Ann brings deep listening practice, gong and bowl work, and somatic sound healing into performance.
Banning Bouldin & New Dialect — Choreography and Dance
Banning Bouldin is a choreographer, educator, and community organizer who received her BFA from the Juilliard School and spent a decade performing internationally with companies including Aszure Barton & Artists, Cullberg Ballet, and Hubbard Street. In 2013, she returned to her hometown of Nashville and founded New Dialect, the city’s first professional contemporary dance company. Under her direction, New Dialect has become a cornerstone of Nashville’s performing arts landscape, producing site-specific and interdisciplinary works and earning Banning two nominations for the United States Artist Fellowship. New Dialect’s dancers bring contemporary technique, improvisation, and nonbinary partnering skills to In Her Voice, making them ideally suited for a work that demands both athletic physicality and sensitive responsiveness to gallery art.
Setup and Technical Requirements
Staging
The electronic musician is positioned at the entrance to the Ingram Gallery with a Moog Minimoog Model D, pedal steel guitar, laptop, and a small stereo PA. During the central movements, they periodically travel through the gallery with portable recording equipment to capture live material for the coda.
One performer is positioned in the center of the gallery with an optional pedestal (allowing her to sit approximately three feet off the ground), a symphonic gong, a shruti box, and a circle of koshi chimes. Two performers are positioned in each of the four thematic gallery rooms (Materiality and Memory, Cultural Foundations, Scenes and Dreams, and Patterns and Abstraction), each with a symphonic gong.
Sound System
A pair of stereo speakers is placed in each of the exhibition’s four rooms, plus a pair at the electronic musician’s station, all fed from the electronic musician’s setup. The system should deliver clear, controlled sound at moderate volume — supportive of the acoustic instruments and voices without overpowering them or disturbing the contemplative gallery atmosphere.
Instruments and Materials
Symphonic gongs (at least 9: one for each of the eight outer performers, one or more for the center performer), mallets, bows, rubber ball mallets (flumis), koshi chimes (9, one per non-center performer), one shruti box, one tongue drum or handpan, one crystal tuning fork, Moog Minimoog Model D analog synthesizer, pedal steel guitar, laptop with audio interface and recording capability.
Wardrobe
The electronic musician wears a men’s business suit. All other performers wear ballet leotards with removable layers of gauzy fabric on the upper body. The wardrobe is integral to the work: the suit underscores the masculine frame, while the layered fabric on the performers allows for a moment of shedding in Movement 7 that carries symbolic weight.
Performers
All performers other than the electronic musician play percussion, dance, and use their voices. Given that the work addresses the voices of female artists and that an integral aspect is the masculine holding space for the feminine, it is strongly suggested that the electronic musician identify as male while all other performers identify as female.
Pre-Production Needs
In advance of the performance, the composer will need to coordinate with the exhibited artists and/or the Frist curatorial team to obtain or create audio recordings of the artists’ voices and of the materials used in the exhibited works. These recordings are essential to the introduction and coda. A walkthrough of the Ingram Gallery will also be needed to finalize speaker placement, performer positions, sight lines, and audience flow.
Performance Score
The following is a movement-by-movement outline of the work. Throughout all movements, the electronic musician provides supportive ambient sound, bass drones, and occasional concussive impacts from their station and speakers throughout the gallery. At points during the performance, they move through the gallery with portable recording equipment.
Introduction: Awareness | 30 minutes
The electronic musician creates bespoke ambient music using recordings of the materials in the exhibited works and the actual voices of the exhibiting artists. This music plays through speakers in each of the four gallery rooms and at the performer’s station. The gallery is open; visitors enter the sonic environment before the central movements begin.
Movement 1: Reverence | 5 minutes
All performers are seated, facing their gongs, holding intention and focus in perfect, settled stillness. The center performer plays her gong very quietly — only enough to create rich, deep tones without activating higher harmonics. Mallets are used primarily, with one or two bow strokes and one or two rubber ball mallet (flumi) notes introduced sparingly, just enough to suggest the instrument’s range.
Movement 2: Womb | 5 minutes
All performers are seated, facing the gongs. Sound begins to rise from silence from every corner of the gallery as all performers begin playing gongs very quietly. The gongs crescendo from niente to mezzo piano over the course of the movement, activated only enough to create rich, deep tones. Ideally, the vibrations can be felt through the floor but remain below the threshold of higher harmonics. Only mallets are used.
Movement 3: Emerging | 5 minutes
Bodies begin waking up. Performers introduce subtle movement while still seated and still playing gongs. The gongs grow louder, crescendoing from mezzo piano to forte. The sound remains mostly dark, with some higher harmonics emerging but carefully controlled. Bows and rubber ball mallets (flumis) may be used with discretion.
Movement 4: Embodiment | 5 minutes
Performers move to standing. All gongs are now at forte, occasionally loud enough to open up higher harmonics but never explosive or splashy. Movement becomes bigger and more spatial, but performers return to the gong frequently enough to keep sound present in the space. The sound from the outer performers becomes more pointillistic while the center performer’s sound stays more constant, anchoring the space.
Movement 5: Inner Awakening / Outer Awakening | 5 minutes
Performers stop playing gongs and slowly become still. Vocal toning begins while the gongs are still resonating. Performers move to a reverent kneeling position in front of their gong and tone into its surface, activating its resonance with their voices. The image evoked is that of stoically gazing into a mirror — honoring the instrument, honoring oneself.
Movement 6: Relating | 5 minutes
The gongs fade out gradually. Performers stand and begin to move through the gallery room they occupy, walking with intention, toning to individual pieces of art on the walls. A subtle drone from the electronic musician plays through the speakers in each room, supporting the voices from a distance, absent from view.
Movement 7: Expressing | 10 minutes
The longest and most complex movement. Vocal toning continues as performers shift from relating to the art to being with themselves in their toning — listening inward, expressing outward. They move through sustained vowels (A, E, I, O, U) on intuitively chosen pitches, gradually migrating from their home galleries toward the center. Movement reflects the artistic voice of the gallery in which each performer began.
Pitch entrainment among the performers is invited to happen. Performers become expressive with the fabric on their bodies; some fabric is removed, symbolizing the shedding of skin. Performers create brief but intense eye contact with individual audience members as they tone and move, breaking the fourth wall. This asks the audience to confront how they relate to women — respectfully and with the intention of listening and making connections, or by objectifying. These juxtapositions should be done subtly. The toning deepens and grows louder as performers converge on the center.
Movement 8: Gathering / Community | 5 minutes
All performers have gathered in the center space. They move together, intertwining bodies, creating the most intense vocal toning of the work in both volume and depth. The toning evokes the sounds of labor, and of communal feminine support in sorrow, oppression, and grief. Even as a collective, each performer’s movement still references the artistic character of the gallery where she began.
(As throughout, the performers’ sound is supported by deep bass sounds from the electronic musician, offering both drones and possibly occasional concussions / impacts, which are especially important at this part of the piece.)
Movement 9: Holding | 5 minutes
The most intense and loudest vocal toning. Pitch has fully entrained — all performers tone on a single shared pitch. They hold each other in loving, supportive embrace. Sadness, joy, and strength are present simultaneously.
(As throughout, the performers’ sound is supported by deep bass sounds from the electronic musician, offering both drones and possibly occasional concussions / impacts, which are especially important at this part of the piece.)
Movement 10: Creation / Birth | 5 minutes
All performers form a circle around the center performer, facing inward, shielding and protecting her before her vulnerable expression. Each takes a koshi chime and begins to sound it gently while slowly turning outward. They begin to sit, still sounding the chimes, gradually revealing the center performer seated on her pedestal. She begins a simple, childlike, improvised melody on a tongue drum or handpan. All movement should be synchronized, so that the performers start to move to a seat simultaneously and arrive in a seated position simultaneously.
At 2.5 minutes, the koshi chimes gently cease. By 3 minutes, all chimes are placed on the ground. The center performer slowly stands (if not on a pedestal) and plays a solo for the final 2 minutes.
Movement 11: Deep Listening / The Absence of Her Voice | 5 minutes
Silence. Stillness. No sound from the electronic musician. The gallery holds only the ambient presence of the space itself and the residual vibration of what has come before. At 4:30, the center performer strikes a small crystal tuning fork three times, with approximately 10 seconds of silence between each strike. This signifies the ending.
Coda: Integration / Expansion | 30 minutes
The electronic musician returns to their station and creates ambient music for the final thirty minutes, weaving recordings captured during the live performance with the same recordings of artists’ voices and material sounds used in the introduction. Past, present, and future are drawn together in sound. The masculine frame re-emerges — this time as steward, holding space for voices that have now been fully heard.
— End —