State of Being

Creative Direction — Gwendolyn Kuhlmann

Created by Emily Thorner, soprano

Format Touring concert for one vocalist

Composers UK, Germany, United States, Norway

Instrumentation Voice, electronics

Emily Thorner came with a question: do we really know who we are if we look deeply enough? Gwendolyn heard it — and saw that Emily had already lived the answer.

"What does it look like to look that deeply? What comes up? What does it feel like to heal yourself — and then to heal others? For the first time, Emily combined her two practices on the same stage. The result was something that healed the performer in the act of performing it, and healed the audience in the act of witnessing it."

The project

Two practices, one container —
singer and spiritual healer.

Emily Thorner is a world-class soprano — described by Second Inversion as an "ultra soprano" and by The Stranger as a "new music rising star" — and a spiritual healer: a Reiki Master with a practice in past-life healing. She came to this project with a question she had been sitting with: do we really know who we are if we look deeply enough? She had commissioned new works from composers in the UK, Germany, the United States, and Norway to explore that question through music. She had a concert. What she didn't yet have was a story.

She invited Gwendolyn in as creative director. What followed was a transformation of the entire premise.

Gwendolyn heard the question Emily had been asking — do we really know who we are? — and saw what Emily herself hadn't quite seen yet: that she had already lived this question, and that philosophical questions are most powerful and immediate when we share the lived experience of them. Gwendolyn took it beyond philosophical inquiry and into a personal narrative arc: Emily's own spiritual healing journey, told in sequence — what it looks like to look that deeply at yourself, what comes up when you do, what it feels like to heal yourself, and what it then means to offer that healing to others.

Gwendolyn wrote monologues — woven throughout the program between the musical pieces — that provided context, grounded the story, and carried the audience through the arc alongside Emily. She also looked at what was latent in Emily's sound healing practice and asked: what if you brought that onto the stage too? What if you layered mantras live with a looping pedal? Emily heard the possibility and translated it into something profound — the voice as healing instrument and classical instrument at once, in the same room, in the same breath.

It was the first time Emily had ever combined her two practices on the same stage. The concert did not just entertain. It did what Emily had always believed it could do — because it finally had the story to carry it.

The arc of the journey

The monologues Gwendolyn wrote gave the commissioned music a story to carry — moving the concert from question to lived experience, from the inside out.

"What does it look like to look that deeply at yourself?"

The opening movement — the decision to go inward. What it costs to turn toward yourself honestly, and what you find when you do. The music begins here, in the territory of genuine inquiry.

"What comes up — and what does healing yourself actually feel like?"

The middle passage. The darkest parts, met directly. The process of working through what you find — not as metaphor, but as lived experience. This is where Emily's sound healing practice enters the stage for the first time.

"What does it mean to then heal others?"

The arrival. Having gone through the journey herself, Emily turns outward — offering the same healing to the audience. The concert becomes, in its final movement, an act of giving. The room changes.

Creative direction

A question became a story — and the story became a healing.

What I brought to this project was what I bring to all of my work: the ability to hear what someone is building and find the narrative structure underneath it. Emily had remarkable material — extraordinary commissioned music, two distinct and powerful practices, and a genuine desire to offer something healing to her audience. What she needed was the story that would let all of it cohere.

I wrote the monologues that became the connective tissue of the concert. I shaped the order of the program so that the musical pieces and the spoken narrative moved together through a single arc — from inquiry, to descent, to healing, to offering. And I worked with Emily to bring her sound healing practice onto the stage alongside her classical voice, in a way that felt not like two things happening next to each other, but like one thing finally whole.

This is a different kind of work from my community oral history projects — but it draws on the same root skill. You listen until you understand what the story actually is. Then you build the container that lets it be heard.

The concert's elements

Commissioned new music — works written specifically for Emily's voice and this project by composers from four countries, each carrying a different movement of the healing journey.
Written monologues — Gwendolyn wrote spoken texts woven between the musical pieces, grounding the arc of Emily's personal story and guiding the audience through the journey alongside her.
Sound healing through the voice — Gwendolyn saw the possibilities latent in Emily's healing practice and proposed: what if you layered mantras live with a looping pedal? Emily translated the idea into something profound. It was the first time her two practices had shared a stage, and the result exceeded both their expectations.
Electronics — used throughout as accompaniment, creating a sonic landscape that supported the emotional and spiritual arc of the journey.

State of Being

Two practices, one container — singer and spiritual healer.

A question became a story — and the story became a healing.

The complete performance, recorded live.

Two practices, one container —
singer and spiritual healer.

The complete performance,
recorded live.