With A Greeting (2011)

SSAATTBB Chorus 6 min.
Commissioned by The Esoterics; Eric Banks, founding director
For the POLYPHONOS Young Composer Prize, 2011

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Afanasy Fet (1820 – 1892)
 
(Russian)

Ya pri-shol k tye-bye s pri-vye-tŏm
Ras-ska-zat’, shto son-tse fsta-lŏ,
Shto ŏ-no gŏ-rya-chim svye-tŏm
Pŏ lis-tam za-trye-pye-ta-lŏ.
 
Ras-ska-zat’, shto les prŏ-snul-sya,
Ves’ prŏ-snul-sya, vet-koy kazh-dŏy,
Kazh-dŏy pti-tsey fstrye-pye-nul-sya
I vye-syen-nyey po-lŏn zhazh-dŏy.
 
Ras-ska-zat’, shto s toy zhe stra-styu,
Shto fche-ra, pri-shol ya sno-va,
Shto du-sha fsyo tak zhe shya-styu
I tye-bye slu-zhit’ gŏ-to-va.
 
Ras-ska-zat’, shto ŏ-tŏ-fsyu-du
Na mye-nya vye-syel’-yem ve-yet,
Shto ne zna-yu sam, shto bu-du
Pyet’ – no pyes-nya zre-yet.
I come to you with a greeting,
To tell you that the sun has risen,
That its blazing light
Has made the leaves tremble;
 
To tell you that the forest is awake,
Everything is awake, and upon every branch,
Every bird of the forest stirs
And is filled with the thirst of spring;
 
To tell you that with the same passion
As yesterday, I come to you again,
And my soul is still joyful
And ready to serve you;
 
To tell you that everywhere
Happiness is in the air,
And I do not know what I will
Sing – only that a song is ripening.

 

Shaker Dance Song (2010)

SATB Chorus 2 min.
for Laura Shagalov and Christopher Long,
on the occasion of their wedding,
Saturday, June 12, 2010

Traditional Shaker Song

Like pretty birds among the trees I will be all in motion,
And skip and dance upon the breeze of love and sweet devotion.
For lo it is a happy time, a time of making merry,
Of heavenly comfort all divine and very cheering, very.

 

Unseen Secrets (2010)

SSAA Chorus and Piano 3 min.
Commissioned by WomenSing, Martin Benvenuto, artistic director through the Marcia Hodges New Music Fund as part of the Youth Inspiring Youth project

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Quinn H. Whitlow (b. 2001)

I hide my secrets in the core of a brick
and on the surface of a star.

I tell my secrets to the unseen spirits around me
and the light rays from the sun.

Secrets live where man cannot go,
in the farthest part of space
and inside a velvet mite.

 

Two Keats Choruses (2009)

SSAATTBB Chorus 14 min. total

I. The Human Seasons 8 min.

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John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
 There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s hony’d cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness–to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

II. The Poetry of Earth 6 min.

Commissioned by Volti, Robert Geary, artistic director

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The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury, – he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

 

Don’t You Worry (2006)

SATB Choir 3 min.
For Carnegie Mellon Jazz Vocal Ensemble, Thomas Douglass, Artistic Director

August Wilson (1945 – 2005)

I done give you everything I had to give you. I gave you your life! Don’t you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you. You understand what I’m saying, boy?

 

The Underground (2004)

TTBB Choir 2 ½ min.
For the CMU Originals

W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

The underground roads
Are, as the dead prefer them,
Always tortuous.

 

Melliphony (2003)

SSAATTBB Choir 2 ½ min.