RubyFIRE: Shared Visions
Featuring Shared Visions, Ars Nova Singers’ signature collaborative project, connecting Colorado visual, literary, and musical artists in chains of inspiration.
We’re igniting the Colorado arts scene! For our 4th Shared Visions venture, we start by assembling a gallery of 21 visual art works by seven Colorado artists. Next, we invite Colorado poets to engage with this art and respond to its inspiration with original poems that we compile into an anthology. Four Colorado composers are then commissioned to incorporate this anthology into new music for chorus. Finally, our performances will gather all these Colorado creatives together – and then the artworks will truly sing! The cycle is complete when YOU, the audience, join us to bring this new art to life.
Our 2026 chains of inspiration:
Visual Artist: Alex Gogoliev
Poet: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Composer: Glenda Luck
Visual Artist: Claire Ibarra
Poet: Nina Kentwortz
Composer: Leah Porter Tracy
Visual Artist: Jan R. Carson
Poet: Moudi Sbeity
Composer: Paul Fowler
Visual Artist: Gayle Gerson
Poet: Heather Gardner
Composer: Tom Morgan
The concert will also feature Valerie Szarek on Native American flute, and Gavin Kitchen on marimba.
Artwork: “Ring of Fire” by Scott Fraser
"Last night was one of the most profound moments of my life. To be sung my poem, transformed into a work of beauty, surrounded by ones I love… To meet the artists who inspired my words and others in the program… To have that moment of realization that I was part of something far larger than myself was transformative and deeply, deeply moving. I cried before the first note was played, and throughout the entire piece… The sense of connectedness last night was more powerful than I could have ever dreamed of or hoped for. As I was reading the words of my poem ‘I am yearning to be filled to the brim’ my heart sand to me loudly and sweetly in a language beyond words… but with deep and abiding affirmation."
Jen Gurney (A former Shared Visions poet)