"Vesper Sparrow opens with a declaration: "A stutter c-c-can be a musical instrument." This was an epiphany for the Grenadian-Jamaican-American composer and artist JJJJJerome Ellis, and became the guiding principle of their work. At an early age, Ellis found liberation in the fluid sounds of the saxophone; speaking, by contrast, caused shame and discomfort. Ellis' stutter manifests as a glottal block, an involuntary pause in their speech. Eventually, Ellis learned to see these pauses as a source of possibility."
"In a social context, a block can lead to confusion or embarrassment, but in a musical setting that same pause can dilate time, create moments of intimacy, and open avenues for improvisation. Now, Ellis follows their stutter like a path through the wilderness, trusting it like true intuition. Ellis calls their glottal blocks "clearings," as in a suddenly open space in the middle of a forest path. Historically, clearings were places where enslaved African Americans could congregate and pray."
JJJJJerome Ellis transforms a glottal-block stutter into musical material called 'clearings.' Early saxophone playing provided liberation, while spoken language produced shame and discomfort, shaping a practice that treats involuntary pauses as possibilities. In performance contexts, glottal blocks dilate time, produce intimacy, and invite improvisation; in social contexts they can cause confusion or embarrassment. Vesper Sparrow narrows focus on temporality, using reduced verbal content to show how stuttering can suspend time for speaker and listener and how bridging those suspensions can reveal family legacy, Blackness, and intergenerational connections.
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