Music: Choral

Beginning
2023

for SATB choir and solo violin. Text by James Wright. Length 4.5′

A spooky scene set in a midwestern cornfield. It’s supernatural and moody.

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Winter Is Past
2022

for SATB choir. Text from the Song of Songs (Bible). Length 2′

An optimistic piece that sets the famous “Rise up, my love, my fair one” psalm. This simple, brief setting focuses on the hopeful promise of change and of spring.

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the wound is the light is the place is
2020 / 2017

SATB chorus, a cappella.  Text in English by Rumi.  Length 4.5′. Second Prize winner in the 2021 Institute for Choral Creativity Composition Competition.

A setting of Rumi’s words “the wound is the place where the light enters you.” The music is a dramatization of the way that woundedness and sacredness are interdependent. It starts in a place of sadness and moves to one of joy.

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Oh California
2019
excerpt from live reading

for SSAATTBB choir.  Text adapted from the lyrics to the California Gold Rush song “Oh California” by J. Nichols (1849).  Length: 4′

A climate-themed piece that expresses regret for the way humanity has treated the Earth. The lyrics to the 19th Century miner’s song “Oh California” are reset and reimagined from a twenty-first century perspective. It’s mournful and ghostly.

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Four Bright Seasons
2011
Autumn Day
Wash of Cold River

SATB choir, a cappella. Texts in English by Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson,and H.D. Length: 15′

A choral cycle about the seasons. Each movement expresses an emotional landscape particular to each of the four seasons.

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Sh'ma Yisrael
2015

For SSAATTBB choir, a cappella.  Traditional Hebrew text.  Length 4′

A musical “icon” of the “Sh’ma” text from the Hebrew liturgy. The piece dramatizes the forceful exhortation that the “Sh’ma” represents.

Hear the Voice
2015

For SATB choir, a cappella.  Text in English by William Blake.  Length 3′

A gentle and mysterious piece about rebirth and renewal.

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Forever is composed of Nows
2011

SSAATTBB choir, a cappella. Text in English by Emily Dickinson. Length: 5′

An ecstatic setting of a poem by Emily Dickinson about the nature of time.

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Prologue: A Man Said to the Universe
2010

SATB choir and tape. Text in English by Stephen Crane. Length: 3.5′

A mini-drama in which an individual human voice addresses the vastness of the universe. The tape part is a drone derived from a NASA recreation of the sound of the sun.

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How She Went to Ireland
2009

SATB choir, a cappella. Text in English by Thomas Hardy.

A tale of a woman who may or may not have taken a wintry voyage to Ireland. It’s expansive and elegiac.

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Break
2008

SATB choir, a cappella. Text in English by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Length: 4′

This dark and ominous setting of “Break” by Tennyson conveys a sense of mourning. The undulating music reflects the nautical imagery of the text.

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Tremors: A Report
2007
Excerpt

For chorus, narrator and orchestra. Text in English by John Kinsella. Length: 13′

A dramatic, narrative piece about an earthquake in Western Australia in the 1960s. It’s about trauma and its aftermath.

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