light & dark songs
SATB a cappella with soloists | Graphite | 5' | Text by Barbara Crooker
After the Storm Passes depicts a tumultuous journey on the wind following the rain: "In this clean new light, the corn is polished, carved of jade, leaves of beryl, viridian [...] Under this great glass eye we stand, on the rim of summer, the bones of winter under our feet, washed again in this bright loud light."
SSAA a cappella | Graphite | 4' | Text by Barbara Crooker
One Blue Sky excerpts a poem by Barbara Crooker: "One blue sky, fragile as a robin's egg, covers us all. [...] Maybe the stars / spell different stories to you, to me, / but in the darkness of the night, they are light enough to see by."
SATB a cappella | 4.5' | Mark Foster Series | Text: Annie Finch
All We Need sets to music Annie Finch's poem “Earth Day," which is a celebration of all that the planet offers us as well as a plea to respect what we find here:"
All we need is to find the dark / in the nighttime sky, to lie down to sleep / in the darkness, where stars and moon keep vigil, / in the silence of a sleeping earth. / All we require is to wake to sunlight / in the morning, to simple sky."
SATB or SSAA a cappella | 4' | Mark Foster Series | Text: Laura Foley
Not just an exultation of happiness, Threads of Joy recognizes how we emerge from darkness and pain back into light. The music captures this duality
in ever-shifting prismatic harmonies.
SATB a cappella | 4' | Graphite | Text: Barbara Crooker
Light of Late November sets another richly-descriptive text by Barbara Crooker, this one a praise of all that late November brings: "thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones," and "the meadow of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory, the remains of summer." "Though darkness gathers," Crooker writes, "praise our crazy fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough."
