SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College announces the new installation in its long-running sound art series: Elevator Music 43: Yvette Janine Jackson—Destination Freedom opened Saturday, May 21, and runs through October 2, 2022.

Destination Freedom is an immersive electroacoustic composition that takes listeners on a journey in search of freedom: from the hull of a 19th-century slave ship, across time, to a place in the imaginative future. Using history as a mirror for contemporary social issues, Yvette Janine Jackson anchors the work in research focused on how humans were stored in the cargo ships that carried them through the Middle Passage. By blending and manipulating sounds from myriad sources including field recordings, electronic sound, and samples from the internet, Jackson creates a haunting, emotional, epic narrative without words.

Jackson is a composer and installation artist who brings attention to historical events and social issues through her radio operas. Her work has been presented at Audiorama, Fylkingen, MuseumsQuartier Tonspur Passage, Borealis Festival, Banff Centre, and in residence at Stockholm EMS. Her album Freedom, produced by the Fridman Gallery, debuted as Contemporary Album of the Month in the January 2021 issue of The Guardian and “Destination Freedom” won the Giga-Hertz Production Award 2021. In fall 2022, she will present the world premiere of Left Behind for her Radio Opera Workshop ensemble at the Venice Music Biennale and a new work for orchestra and electronics co-commissioned by American Composers Orchestra and Carnegie Hall. Jackson is an assistant professor in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry in the Department of Music at Harvard University and also teaches for Harvard’s Theater, Dance & Media program.

This exhibition is organized by Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator, and is supported by the Friends of the Tang.


The exhibition is free and open to the public.