season songs
SATB chorus, mezzo-soprano soloist & audience
text: Barbara Crooker | 75'
A Calendar of Light is a twenty-four movement, concert-length work. With a libretto by poet Barbara Crooker, this new piece explores how our relationship to change is mirrored in our relationship to the changing seasons. These range from small changes, like our personal triumphs and artistic failures, to the urgent and wide-ranging consequences of climate change. This piece calls for reflection and action in recurring refrains and six call-and-response movements that invite the audience to join in singing.
SSA, Violin & Piano | 5' | Boosey & Hawkes | Text: Annie Finch
Frozen In evokes the chilly stillness of a placid winter evening walk and sets an evocative text by poet Annie Finch. This piece was commissioned by women’s chorus Voix d’Esprit (Gary Seighman, director) of Trinity University, San Antonio, TX.
SATB, SSAA or TTBB a cappella | 3' | Graphite | Text: Barbara Crooker
Completing the Circle sets a text by Barbara Crooker: "Gathering branches / of green pine / in the dead of the year, / making rings of fire / in wax and wood, / completing the circle / with calls and cards, / wreathing the children / in cinnamon and chocolate, / stringing berries and corn, / stringing memories, / quilting them tightly, / in winter, / with the days of grey / and iron nights."
SSAA a cappella | 3' | Boosey & Hawkes | Text: Stacy Gnall
Flare is constantly in motion, a rhythmic race "through trees with bursting limbs" that drives toward the last line: “big brother, I am catching up to you.”s.
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."
