WHEN TWO BECOME ONE
SPAACES, 2087 Princeton Street, Sarasota, FL 34237
Friday, October 3rd, 2025 @ 6:00pm
FREE ADMISSION & PARKING
A Sonopoetic Response to Traces of Change
When Two Become One is where the visual and performing arts converge — where the language of mark-making meets rhythm, voice, and sound. This performance is a living dialogue with the exhibition at Sarasota’s SPAACES: Traces of Change: Mark Making, Text, and (Social) Progress?, translating its themes into a sonic, embodied experience.
Each visual artist leaves a trace — a record of change, both personal and collective — and our response builds upon those marks. Through Spoken Word, marimba, and percussion, we create a cross-disciplinary conversation, exploring how music and text can bear witness, challenge, and inspire. Each rhythmic cell, each story spoken, becomes its own mark.
People Trippin is the collaborative performance project that gives breath to this vision. Acclaimed Spoken Word artist Melanie Lavender and composer/musician Tihda Vongkoth from Modern Marimba fuse rhythm, melody, and poetry into immersive, genre-defying performances that embody the full spectrum of human experience. Melanie Lavender, a Sarasota-based Spoken Word artist, Hermitage Fellow, and TEDx speaker, centers healing, heritage, and identity in her work. Her performances channel spirit and cultural storytelling, offering moments of reflection, empowerment, and connection. Tihda Vongkoth is the artistic director of Modern Marimba, an organization dedicated to inclusive, community-rooted performances that reimagine the role of marimba and percussion in contemporary culture.
At its core, When Two Become One is about connection — between art forms, between past and future, between individual voice and collective spirit. It asks us to consider how creativity, while always impermanent, leaves its mark while serving as a catalyst for change.
PROGRAM:
Gulf of Mexico
This piece opens with a manipulated audio track that dissolves into live performance, weaving marimba and ocean drum. The shifting soundscape evokes both the memory and the power of water — a reminder of how deeply the Gulf shapes culture, history, and mental health.
Heart of the Drum
From the rhythms that once called communities together to the beats that shape today’s music and culture, Heart of the Drum places percussion at the center — a bridge between history and now, memory and movement. Using doumbek and djembe performed by Vongkoth, this piece with Spoken Word channels the drum as messenger, storyteller, and heartbeat, showing how every rhythm carries power, connection, and the pulse of our shared story.
Ode to Lysol
Here, the cabasa, a Latin percussion instrument similar to the shekere, evokes a spray can, turning everyday sound into rhythmic commentary. Inspired by the rituals of cleanliness and the ongoing reality of COVID-19, the piece mixes humor, rhythm, and past social trends, turning a familiar act of disinfection into a cadence that reflects our times.
Ms. Karen Mack
A work built on handclaps, this piece draws from playful childhood clapping games and nursery rhymes, reimagining them as satirical commentary of the present day. The simplicity of the gesture becomes expansive, connecting audience and performer through the most elemental instrument we all carry: our hands and our voice.
Glass Houses No. 9 (Ann Southam)
Adapted for marimba and recording, this work builds a shimmering sonic architecture through repetition and pattern. The interplay of live performance with fixed media reflects Southam’s interest in minimalism, allowing the listener to step back and mellow out.
3003
In a future where history is a weapon, one teacher risks everything to tell the truth. “3003” is a solo Spoken Word piece that takes the listener to a distant future where knowledge is contraband and remembering the past is a crime. Lavender’s performance explores powerful questions: How bad does it have to get before we speak truth to power? If not now, when? If not us, who?
“3003” addresses experiences of racial violence, sexual abuse, and gun violence. We share this work in a spirit of bearing witness and resilience, as a space for reflection on our shared history.
Program Notes written by Melanie Lavender and Tihda Vongkoth.
This performance is generously supported by:
