Featuring a group of performing artists at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, July 5
Cambridge, Mass. – For one night next month, a group of performing artists will bring an evocative collection of song and musical theater to Cambridge. The city’s Multicultural Arts Center will host “Nocturnes” on July 5 from 7-9 p.m. Somerville-based singer and composer Shira Laucharoen, who organized the show, said it will not shy away from the turmoil of emotions, questions, and reflections our current moment evokes.
“Just because something feels sorrowful in some way, doesn’t mean that it can’t also be uplifting,” said Laucharoen. “We live in times right now [when] there can be a lot of darkness.” While that darkness prompts some artists to flavor their work with levity, she said her own explores life’s shadows.
This sentiment will underpin the performances, which include evening-themed lullabies, ballads, and elegies by a group of six artists all of whom will be sharing a stage for the first time. In addition to Laucharoen, the audience will hear from actor Fady Demian, cellist Lauren Roberts, pianists Sophy Gao and Sakurako Kanemitsu, and singer Chloe Gardner.
“I’m really excited to see how our different energies and different points of view, different perspectives will meld and merge together,” said Laucharoen. “It could make for a really memorable evening.”
“Nocturnes” began to take shape in late December when Laucharoen worked with Najee Brown, Artistic Director for the Multicultural Arts Center, to secure a date and time for the performance. Brown provided support, but gave her free range in developing the idea and assembling the cast. To do so, she drew on the years of exposure she has had to Boston artists both as a performer, arts enthusiast, and as a reporter covering arts and culture for local publications.
Laucharoen will be performing 14 songs over about 45 minutes, including a short ballet. Roberts will accompany her for seven songs and one will be a duet with Gardner.
She said these collaborations transformed her work. “Something kind of magical happens when you have these songs in your head that you’ve been playing by yourself or doing independently and then once you get in a room with someone else and they make it all come to life through the collaboration, I think that feels really genuine and amazing,” she said. “Sometimes the person you’re working with will see things about the song that you didn’t necessarily see.”
Laucharoen’s work for the show has come together over several years and its themes have inspired her for even longer. She grew up listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes. Like her work, Chopin’s collection embarks on a rising and falling journey through enchanting dreamscapes and shifting shadows.
Her song “Can’t Make This Up” grabs listeners with an upbeat cello intro before diving into a narrative of nostalgia and yearning. “It’s sort of capturing these precious golden moments of life,” said Laucharoen. But the song’s refrain invites listeners to question what they are hearing, drawing them deeper into the storyline. Upbeat, clever, and inviting of fantasy, it’s a piece that would prime an adventurous plot as part of a larger story arc.
In contrast, the ballad “Me and You, Alike” is a stark moment of realization demanding maturity and pragmatism as the narrator sheds a layer of fancifulness. Laucharoen said this piece is her most honest. As part of a musical, she said it would happen toward the end, “where everything that could possibly have gone wrong has gone wrong. And yet, this is a character saying that there’s something that they’re holding on to.”
That glimmer of hope she lets shine through is representative of a pattern within the “Nocturnes” collection. Throughout, the works dapple light and dark, shifting in the way a mind might as it settles in for the night.
The songs also reflect Laucharoen’s own artistic development, having been written and revised over two to three years. Within that span, she said she has found herself as a performer. “Growing up, I was probably scared to share my voice with people,” she said. Overcoming that fear took time and exercise. “It’s more than being nervous to go on stage. It took work to say, can I tell things that are not necessarily what you’re seeing of me now? Can you dig into a different place and say something that you haven’t said to people before?”
Looking forward to the show, Laucharoen said she hopes people get caught up in the moment. The performance will come alive against the backdrop of the Multicultural Arts Center’s theater, which features high ceilings and intricate vintage balconies. La Saison Bakery will be onsite to serve drinks and desserts. And the performers will bring their best, aiming to ignite fantasy and leave audiences with questions lingering on their palates.
“This group of musicians hasn’t performed together before, so I think seeing us all come together for this one-night-only experience is probably going to be something that will not ever happen again in the same way,” said Laucharoen. “It’ll be a moment in time that I hope people will want to capture.
Tickets for “Nocturnes” are available online and can be purchased on site at the Multicultural Arts Center box office up to one hour in advance.
This article was co-published with the SOME Publication.
