Leslee Smucker is a performer-composer utilising violin, voice, synthesisers, electronics, film, and poetry. For Rewire 2023’s Sensory Sensitive Concert, Smucker developed the performance Worlds Within, a concert performance that evokes and invites discovery of sound within ourselves. Through this concert — suitable for stimulus-sensitive audiences — she invited the audience into sound worlds and resonances that reside within us by creating an environment conducive to listening, accompanied by resonances that invite deep listening and reflection.
The concert takes the setting inspiration from a prehistoric cave, and travels through six tableaus composed for solo violin using octave lower strings, mutes, low-rosined bows, and handmade ceramic resonators. The hope of the work is to celebrate what is usually unheard or unnoticed—illuminating resonances with our ancient selves.
There are approximately seven million people living in the Netherlands that are sensitive to sensory stimuli. For these individuals, attending a live music event is a challenge and in some cases, an impossible one. This results in social and cultural isolation and the negative side effects thereof. Rewire believes that everyone has the right to access live music and believes that by creating a new work for an often forgotten and excluded group, a bigger conversation can be had about the importance of accessibility to culture.