Shantell Martin collaborated with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo to create the video for his new single, In Darkness Let Me Dwell, released by Nonesuch Records as part of his forthcoming album, Countertenor. Originally composed by John Dowland more than four centuries ago, the piece is performed by Costanzo alongside Dušan Balarin on lute.

Responding to the music, Martin created a visual world built from geometry, lines, words, light, and darkness. Individual forms inhabit a kind of solar system, surrounded by a boundary of dashed light and orbiting a luminous central sphere. As the song unfolds, the viewer moves through this world: drifting toward and away from its forms, moving in and out of focus as day becomes night and light becomes dark.

At the center is a glowing presence that feels simultaneously warm and ominous, something capable of representing both life and death. By the end of the journey, that light has become a dark moon, offering the singer and viewer a final place to dwell.

“For me, lines have become markers and beacons of time, place, and space. Collectively, they become harmonies of what has been, what might be, and what things could become. In this piece, life and death exist in the same sun. There is darkness, but there is also a subtle tenderness and a sense of devotion. The song is still made, the song is still sung, and there is hope in that act of creating, making, and sharing.”  Shantell Martin

The video extends Dowland’s centuries-old meditation on darkness into a contemporary visual landscape, where opposing forces continually coexist: light and dark, movement and stillness, presence and absence, life and death.

In Darkness Let Me Dwell is out now, ahead of Anthony Roth Costanzo’s forthcoming album and book, Countertenor.