ROOT SONG

Root Song invites audiences to listen beyond our species and rediscover the ancient wisdom of trees. To be premiered at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia in May 2026, the project interweaves the voices of Grammy-award-winning Roomful of Teeth – an eight-voice “singing forest” – with science and storytelling, transforming the unseen realities of the woodland into a musical conversation. With music by acclaimed composer Christopher Theofanidis, libretto by poet Melissa Studdard, and storytelling by Narragansett artist Tchin, Root Song asks: What can trees teach us about how to live, listen, and be human at this pivotal moment?

In collaboration with Firelight Theatre Workshop, Root Song will be brought from page to stage over four days at the Harris Center in early May. We invite you to join in the creation of this important work by being Root Song’s very first audience during a preview performance on May 3rd, 2026 at 2:30pm.

Chamber music is a profound act of listening—between musicians, composers, poets, and audiences. Root Song extends this practice outward, inviting the same deep listening to be a bridge to the voices of the more-than-human world, beginning with the trees in our midst.

Root Song is directed by Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil, a director, creative producer, singing actor, educator, and wild blueberry picker rooted in the beautiful and artistically fertile Monadnock region of New Hampshire, the ancestral homelands of the Wabanaki. Her work focuses on how live performance can be a stitch in the great reweaving of humanity back into reciprocal kinship with the rest of life on this good, green Earth.

Collaborators:

Jazimina Creamer-MacNeil, director & creative producer

Firelight Theatre Workshop, workshop facilitator

Roomful of Teeth, performers

Tchin, performer

Christopher Theofanidis, composer

Melissa Studdard, librettist