sky songs
SATB or SSAA a cappella | 5' | Graphite | Text: Laura Foley
As Laura Foley's poem “Like Something Newly Freed” progresses, the narrator shift from observing blackbirds at sunset to imagining herself among them, describing that flight in the first person: "As night begins, / you raise black wings / like leaves, like the lightness of a song." This setting of Foley's text attempts to capture the desire for freedom and flight in our own lives.
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."
SSATTB a cappella | Graphite | 8' | Text by Laura Foley
An ode to the simple comfort of sitting by the fire with a loved one in winter.
"And so to imagine it the whole world at peace / the peace I feel inside my body dissolving into hers [...] no other sight but the hills the endless trees / the white coming down from the sky the fire inside."
SATB a cappella with treble soloist | G. Schirmer | 5.5' | Text by Diane Thiel
Diane Thiel's text for Lodestar, from her poem Nursery Shellgame, describes life in the language of fairy tales and children's stories: "a trail of crumbs," "a handful of blue marbles," "how you wonder what you are."
