Posted March 19, 2026
Ars Nova Singers’ signature project, Shared Visions, returns this season with RubyFIRE, featuring four more stunning groups of artists who have come together in the creation of four new works for chorus.
In this series, we’ll introduce you to each group and share a bit about how they’ve inspired each other in this creative process.
Our Chains of Inspiration start with each visual artist. We began by selecting 7 visual artists who each submitted 3 works to our online gallery. Then the gallery was made available to poets and writers, who, inspired by what they saw, wrote and submitted poetry based on the artworks. Then 4 composers were invited to select a poem and its associated artwork and create a new choral work based on the words and imagery.
These new choral works will be presented on April 24, 25, and 26 in our RubyFIRE: Shared Visions concerts.
The first Chain of Inspiration includes Alex Gogoliev, painter; Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, poet; and Glenda Luck, composer.
For Alex Gogoliev, inspiration often begins at night.
He’s kept a dream journal for years—pages filled with fragments of images that don’t quite translate into words. Sketching became his way of holding onto them. First quickly, with whatever pen was nearby. Then more deliberately, in ink, as his language as an artist began to take shape.
He is also inspired by traveling, walking, simply being outside, immersed in nature. And above all, his children. He says, “When we’re outdoors as a family, their innocent wonder and excitement are contagious. Through their eyes, I’m able to rediscover the beauty of the world, which deepens my appreciation and inspires my work even more.”
You can feel all of that in Little Explorers. It’s not just a scene—it’s a feeling. You sense that the woods are alive and that you’ve stepped into something larger than yourself.
And then someone else steps in—not to explain the image, but to listen to it.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer meets Alex’s work with words.
Her poem doesn’t describe the painting so much as enters into it:
To walk in the woods
is a kind of prayer.
There’s a hush in her writing, a kind of attention that makes you slow down without realizing it. In this work, the forest becomes more than a place – it becomes presence. Something watching, listening, holding. Suddenly, that feeling you had looking at the painting has a voice.
Not a definition. Just a deeper way in.
Just when words feel like they might be enough—they aren’t, and that’s where Glenda Luck begins.
In the relentless pace of modern life, Glenda’s music creates a sanctuary; it’s an intimate invitation to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the emotions and stories that celebrate our collective humanity.
Rooted in a deep bond with nature and inspired by a childhood spent dancing barefoot through the forest in upstate New York, her compositions offer a moment of warmth and stillness, a chance for transformation and meaning.
Immersed in classical music and ballet from childhood, Glenda studied piano and flute privately through her school years before spending fifteen years composing and performing folk music independently.
Listening to her work feels a bit like stepping into the forest again.
Each Chain of Inspiration moves, not in a straight line, but in a kind of passing –
from dream, to image, to word, to sound.
Each artist receives something and then lets it change in their hands before sending it on its way.
And then it arrives with you.
Maybe as a memory.
Maybe as a feeling you haven’t had in a while.
Maybe as something you don’t quite have words for yet.
You’re part of the chain too. We invite you to experience it with us!