FMP VOL. 3: FEVER DREAM | I CARE IF YOU LISTEN - REVIEW

Review: Amanda Gookin “Forward Music Project 3.0”

Part three of the cellist's commissioning initiative considers what it means to create and exist as a woman through the lens of mental health

by Kathleen McGowan | November 2026

Through Forward Music Project, cellist Amanda Gookin’s ambition has been to inject a sense of humanity into the often abstract and ascetic landscape of new music. The initiative commissions female-identifying composers to write pieces reflecting their experiences as women, and on Forward Music Project 3.0: fever dream (Nov. 13, Bright Shiny Things), Gookin draws listeners into an intense, expressive sound-world that insists its artists be heard, however difficult or complex their ideas might be.

In the liner notes, Gookin summarizes the six new experimental works as “exploring what it means to live, create, and exist as a woman, shaped by experiences of mental health, moving from states of being stuck, tethered, and bound toward freedom and release.” And yet it feels too simple to say that fever dream merely evokes struggles with mental health or women’s perspectives of being in the world. This music captures the kind of interiority that I associate with experimental modernist novels — a feature that keeps me returning to them over time to hear how they, or I, have changed.

Gookin really plays the whole cello with everything she’s got: squeaky hinge-noises, forte multiple-stops, and an intense (intentional!) lack of vibrato. The emotional capacity that fever dream captures is extraordinary; though perhaps, as a feminist project, it is not a surprise. Moments of intensity are effectively offset with moments of lightness or repose, but there is no frivolity through the six pieces. Gookin also does nothing to warm up the sound of her cello beyond its natural timbre, which suggests a refusal to perform conventional beauty or politeness. On an album like this, such niceties would obscure the truth of what these artists have to say.