Executive Producer: Inštitut.abeceda’s 8th composer’s residency program precept.oncept.percept, Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought, and Philosophy.

Composer: Jeff Firewalker Schmitt

Photographer/Creative Director: Brody Hartman

Producers: Jeff Firewalker Schmitt and Brody Hartman

Logline: The Only Mirror is a chamber and vocal ensemble performance with photographic montage to be performed at the 2026 Contemporary Music Week of the 30th Bled International Music Festival in Slovenia (https://www.festivalbled.com/en/). The work is a compassionate reflection about those who struggle with the consequences of poverty, homelessness and their underlying causes.

Synopsis: The Only Mirror is a collaboration between composer Jeff Firewalker Schmitt* and photographer Brody Hartman inspired by the impact of the narrowing of social services and aid for those struggling with homelessness and poverty.

This work seeks to capture the kaleidoscopic nature of this topic. We also attempt to shift perspectives between the impoverished and the privileged witness. It is a sonic and visual story of the inequities and ceaseless desperation of being powerless and voiceless in our culture. The work aims to open the audience’s hearts to the struggle, dignity and beauty of our unhoused neighbors. This is a work about poverty everywhere.

Motivation: To create a piece that reflects the dignity of the unhoused, inspires compassion among the privileged, and stands as an antidote to ‘othering’. To tell an important story in a non-conventional form. To bring awareness and, thru that awareness, healing and equity. 

Jeff Firewalker Schmitt’s work is composed of 7 sections:

SECTION 1: Awakening to the suffering and forbearance for all entangled.

SECTION 2: Bitterness arising from the intractability of the problem.

SECTION 3: Paralysis and the pain of change.

SECTION 4: The mirror that poverty and homelessness reflects to us all.

SECTION 5: Stripped down to the heart

SECTION 6: Awakening to Boddhisattva wisdom: I-am-you and you-are-me

SECTION 7: Closure: will, decree and the power of trust.

Work in progress.