What does it mean to compose from within a voice that has been politicized, pathologized, and—more often than not—unheard? A Voice and Nothing More centers on the sonic textures of trans experience—not as metaphor or identity cue, but as a vantage point for composition, a material starting point.

At the core of the program is a screening of Sarah Hennies’ Contralto (2017), a quietly forceful work that stages the voice—low, wavering, searching—as both subject and score. A live percussion performance extends the film’s inquiry into the embodied tension between performance and performativity, between being heard and being legible.

After the screening, Hennies is joined in conversation by composers Andrew Yee, inti figgis-vizueta and Lulu West to reflect on the GLISS Composition Residency, an experimental initiative for transfeminine composers. Together, they discuss how composition becomes a space of sounding out—a dynamic working through notation, improvisation, resonance to make oneself audible on one’s own terms. The conversation is moderated by Josefina Barcia.