Licity Collins grew up in the cello section of the Washington DC Youth Orchestra and hears all music like a symphony. When her cranky cello teacher yelled at her, “What do you want to play, saxophone?” she took up the saxophone. In addition to guitar, Licity continues to play recorder and piano, which she learned in elementary school and at home. Licity has sung all her life, singing in eight different languages by the time she was in eighth grade, embracing parts from First Soprano to Tenor, from Fauré to Sondheim.
Passionate about classical music of all flavors, Licity engages as enthusiastically with Early Music as she does with New Classical, and everything in between. Her commentary "Beethoven's Fifth" (audio below) was featured on Public Radio International. From 2020-2022 she sat on the BRAVO Community and Education Committee of the prestigious Ojai Music Festival (reflection below).
Her recent release "The Flower in the Mirror Was Dead" combines spoken word and solo instruments in an undefinable experience that some classified as 21st Century Classical. This work sparked her current collaborative composition endeavor, a new spoken-sung opera.
Classified by some as 21st Century Classical THE FLOWER IN THE MIRROR WAS DEAD is a strange and beautiful collaborative collection of scored spoken prose which explores themes of loss, longing, misunderstanding, death, and the slipping of time.
A deeply reflective story about how we listen (and don't listen) to music and why. Inspired by a memorable exchange I had with a very angry man sitting next to me at the Ojai Music Festival during a Steven Schick performance of John Luther Adams' “The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies I-VIII.” This photograph, unknowingly capturing the moment, was in the following Sunday's New York Times. That's my head in the far right corner, and my conversation partner is in the red hat.
A playful romp through my shock and delight one morning as I heard Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic's marvelous take on Beethoven's work. I play "air cello" in this one. Aired on Studio 360 (WNYC/Public Radio International)