Clara Moniz Premieres "Breathe In/Breathe Out" Chamber Work

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The Toronto premiere features eight contemporary classical performers and explores embodiment, grief, and persistence across ten musical movements.

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Emerging composer and vocalist Clara Moniz has announced the premiere of Breathe In/ Breathe Out, a 60-minute chamber work exploring chronic illness, disability, and the experience of living, and performing in a body that can be unpredictable.

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Breathe In/ Breathe Out brings together four vocalists and a string quartet for a new work that considers the different ways illness can affect a person's physical and emotional life. Across ten movements, the piece explores complex experiences in the medical system, grief, hope, and finding agency. It asks what it means to keep moving forward when the life you imagined has changed, and where that persistence comes from.

The music treats the body and voice as instruments in their own right. Breath, vocal sounds, and speech are incorporated into the musical language, alongside more traditional singing and string playing. The performers are asked to move between traditional classical sound worlds, and things that might often be considered noise, exploring the boundaries of musical and non-musical sound.

Breathe In/ Breathe Out allows for the performers to explore embodiment throughout the rehearsal and performance process. There are physically demanding techniques, and ways of using instruments that push them in unusual directions, inspired by the challenges chronic illness poses in performing.

“It is easy to find extremely optimistic and pessimistic accounts of living as a young, disabled person, but much less common to find accounts that are comforting in the reality of how dynamic and complicated life can feel,” says composer Clara Moniz. “I wanted to make something that could acknowledge that complexity without trying to make illness into a tragedy or a source of inspiration. Within the piece there are moments of beauty, comedy, struggle, grief, and joy, and none of them invalidate or diminish the others.”

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/toronto/article/Clara-Moniz-to-Premiere-BREATHE-INBREATHE-OUT-Chamber-Work-20260924)._