CHANNA MALKIN
A year and a half ago, my life changed completely when I became a mother. Suddenly I had this tiny being to love and care for with everything I had. I felt a strength from deep within that would allow me to weather any storm, face any scary monster, only to protect and cherish this little man.
At the same time, I still had my own plans and ambitions, with the release of my debut album, a tour of the new opera I co-created, and a busier concert schedule than ever before. After the grandeur of a performance, the applause, the flowers, I would come home late at night to the tiny and vulnerable. We’d sit in the rocking chair in the dark while my son nursed and I softly sang to him. My heart bursting with an all-encompassing love, and at the same time feeling just utterly, competely and desperately exhausted.
The transformation into motherhood is a whirlwind of contradictions: strength and vulnerability, joy and grief, worry and confidence, boundless energy and total exhaustion. In art and classical music we are often presented with the picture-perfect mother, having achieved her sole purpose in life and fulfilling this role with great satisfaction and ease. With This is not a lullaby, I want to tell the real story of motherhood, of unbreakable bonds, and of life’s big transitions.
This is not a lullaby will be released in spring 2021 by high-end audio label TRPTK (www.trptk.com). Together with cellist Maya Fridman and pianist Artem Belogurov, we will record Miecyslaw Weinberg’s Rocking the child (1977) on poems by Gabriela Mistral, Josef Malkin’s Russian Songs (2020) and John Tavener’s Akhmatova Songs (1993). The recordings will take place in December 2020 in the big hall of the Philharmonie Haarlem.