Program note | When I was writing for Girls’ 21 from Cherry Creek High School, conductor Adam Cave wanted an upbeat piece with percussion, and at first glance this poem doesn’t lend itself to that kind of music. But upon closer inspection, there’s an underlying excitement in the words, a kinetic energy that can translate into powerful music. In the piece, we first hear an observation - a simple melody, stated twice, describing the intrinsic beauty of nature, and this erupts into a fast-paced exploration of how what we see affects us. We are moved by what we see, and these things - whether they are nature or art - become a part of us. — Timothy C. Takach, 2016

Program note | This flowing work for chorus and piano sets a poem by Christina Rossetti which reminds us that sometimes in order to experience great beauty, love, and passion, we must open ourselves up to the possibility of heartbreak and pain. It’s what makes life worth living.

Program note | This simple yet beautiful piece for chorus and concert harp puts the listener in the dead of winter, but as the snow falls on a new day, we see that winter can bring about as much beauty as spring.

Program note | Written in September 2003 on commission from the Dale Warland Singers and adapted in 2010 for SSAA voices on commission by Cantamus Women’s Choir, Cedit, Hyems (Be Gone, Winter!) depicts the coming of Christ into a troubled, confused world. The opening flute is meant to sound lonely as it wanders through unpredictable chords. The chorus entrance also shifts uneasily, as if waiting for something. The flute realizes first the potential of Christ’s coming, encouraging the chorus in faster rhythms, louder dynamics, and soon the voices are attempting to drive the world’s coldness away. At first, because they are so physically and emotionally cold, the voices can only whisper the Latin word "cedit" (“be gone”), but the harsh whispering begins to subside. With a sweeping melody and rhythmic propulsion, the chorus is finally able to shoo out the desolation of winter with the newly acquired strength that only love can bring: "Christ comes! Depart!" –Abbie Betinis

Program note | Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s poem encapsulates so much of the persona we associate with her. She spent much of her adult life as a single, professional woman, which brought her as much public criticism as her poetry did fame. Her two most famous romantic relationships ended in tragedy: one dissolved amid media scrutiny, the other upon her untimely death from a drug overdose. In my musical interpretation of “Revenge”, I chose to show the contrast between her explosively jealous anger and her lyrical elegance that still shows through her most furious moments. While the piece can fairly be heard as being in G-minor, the harmonic weight often comes from the darkness of D-Phrygian mode. The unease of Landon’s sentiment can further be heard through occasional appearances from the whole-tone and octatonic (diminished) scales. This piece is structured simply, in the vein of a traditional folk song. In other words, there are nine stanzas, grouped into three sets of A-A-B form. Each time, the B-section is the most forceful and emotionally untethered. We may not possess a definitive answer as to who broke Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s heart, but to elicit such a rapid fire of eloquent sarcasm and put-downs, he must have been a veritable weasel.

Trevor F. Shaw – December 2021

Program Note | Setting a text by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, this thoughtful and evocative piece compares a dying relationship with the changing of the seasons from summer to winter, which McGlade skilfully reflects in her use of minor tonality, falling melodic phrases, and shifting chromaticism. Reminiscent of the English art song, this setting for upper voices and piano demonstrates McGlade's compositional versatility.

Program note | There is a picture by the marvelous artist Maria Buchfink of a Native American flute player; from his flute rises a cloud of kachinas and totem spirits. This piece has also risen from his notes, and it is indeed influenced by Native American music. The idea of the flute invoking beneficial spirits, be they kachinas or any others, is a very natural one. Such spirits are an accepted and valued part of life in most of the world, and the flute has been used to honor and invite their presence for countless ages. — K. Hoover

Program note | Snowforms was composed by R. Murray Schafer in 1981, revised in 1983, and published in 1986. The idea for a work based on winter landscape textures came from the composer's 1971 flight over Greenland, and from many winters in Ontario during which he would "...study the snow from [his] farmhouse window…."

Although Snowforms began as a series of sketches, in its final form it is one unified piece. Schafer, a skilled painter, used graphic notation (visual symbols rather than standard musical notation) in his highly inventive score that makes use of improvisation and requires the voices to glide between pitches. The use of humming further gives the work the peacefulness and unpredictability of falling snow. The text is based on some of the many Inuit words referring to snow.

Program note | I began writing She Rises because I was interested in exploring the physics of light and the mystery of illumination through the power of the human voice. I began by imagining the sounds of electrons falling from higher to lower energy levels, emitting light in the process. For a few weeks, I walked around making different “sun sounds” and asking other people what they thought the sun “sounded” like.

I was surprised while I was working on the piece to have a Celtic-style melody come to me and I wondered if it was part of the same composition or a new one. If it was a part of the same composition as the “sun sounds,” how did they fit together? I did some research and was delighted to discover the Celtic Sun Goddess, Brigid. This melody inspired the lyrics for She Rises which speak of Brigid as she crosses the sky and of Saint Brigid of Kildare, the Irish saint of, among other things, poetry, the hearth fire, the forge, and illumination. A jubilant celebration of energy, She Rises is a reminder of the light that resides within and around all of us. — Catherine Dalton

Program note | Maeve Gilchrist says of her album, The Ostinato Project, “it is an exploration and celebration of my instrument, the Celtic Harp. In this recording I tried to utilize both hands, both voices to create texture and color and hopefully, beauty.” The mesmerizing ostinato bass line for Yellow Birds appears in 6/8 and 9/8, with sly, but sometimes startling, rhythmic twists. A sprightly melody, which the score describes as “like starlings in the sky,” floats above it. The piece, scored for solo harp, focuses on the two, distinctive single-line voices. It was an intriguing project for Chaski to adapt. What might it sound like if (various) flutes and harp traded the two voices back and forth, each taking turns with the ostinato and the melodic lines? Decide for yourselves — this is the premiere performance of Chaski’s reimagining of Maeve Gilchrist’s Yellow Birds.

Program note | Commissioned for Inversion Da Capo by Becky & Ted Mercado, The Mother of All Things (2020) by Adrienne Inglis, for treble SAA chorus and harp, sets an excerpt from Eurynome: The Mother of All Things as found in From Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths & Monsters by Nikita Gill. Harp joins treble voices to crystallize a girl’s creation myth in which her bones, feet, fingers, and arms conjure her very own dancing, swirling universe.

Program note | Fire Weather is a setting of text from various interviews regarding the California wildfires. Each year, there is now a season of imminent threat from wildfires -- homes destroyed, precious trees burnt into the soil. Throughout the piece, you will hear voices whispering and speaking of these dangers and desperately crying for a call to action. –Cole Reyes

Program Note | east wind melts the ice is the culmination of several influences on my work; the text is taken from the ancient Japanese calendar which divides the year into 50+ micro-seasons, to emphasize that everything is always changing: a central component of eastern meditation practices. The method of adaptation of the text is inspired by the Carnatic rhythmic tradition of the “mora” (shape), which was also applied to text in ancient Indian songs. Musically, the raga (scale) unfolds in the manner of a truncated alap, before breaking out into full-on Western counterpoint, all the while underpinned by a drone inspired by the tanpura. However, unlike in Indian traditions, the drone does change pitch throughout (classical Indian music has no concept of harmony and always keeps one note as the drone), questioning which lens is being used to view the raga. –Anuj Bhutani

Program note | Pavan, commissioned for the Aberdeen Harp Book, is one of a collection of pieces Sally Beamish wrote drawing on material from her score for David Bintley’s ballet of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the ballet, it appears in the Act 4 masque, as a solo for the Goddess Iris. She represents air and sky, birdsong, zephyrs, and gentle rain. The score specifies that, while the piece may be performed on concert harp, it is written for Scottish lever harp. Ms. Norton is playing a lever harp made in North Ballachulish, Scotland, by Starfish Designs.

Program note | Fire is the third movement from Katerina Gimon’s Elements, a set of choral works that abstractly depict the four classical elements and explore the wide range of capabilities of the human voice - from overtone singing to vocal percussion, to colorful vocal timbres. Elements features no 'text' (at least not in the traditional sense), rather a series of syllables generated through improvisation meant to evoke the sound and energy of each element.

Program note | I Eat Alone was commissioned as a part of the #MidwestHungerIs campaign at the Writing Center of Michigan State University and was premiered by the MSU Women’s Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Sandra Snow, in 2016. This piece is based on a selection of writings that were submitted as a part of the campaign, the final text being an amalgamation of the ideas of several female participants at various stages of life; “young motherhood,” “mid-life” and “old age.” The work tracks the occurrence of eating alone throughout these stages, progressing from a rare moment of welcome solitude in young motherhood, to a common occurrence in mid-life, and finally to a cause for outright loneliness in old age.

With the constant false/cross relations between D natural and D flat, much of this work is modally in the form of a deconstructed B flat blues scale, with the D flat major chord being based on one of the blue notes. The dirge-like harmonic progression found in much of the piece, which is reminiscent of a short passacaglia, lends a degree of uncertainty to an already rather dark subject. — Thomas LaVoy

Program note | “In the middle of winter… an invincible summer within me” – this text is the crux of a lyrical essay by Camus, from a trip back to Algeria, his birthplace, after World War II and its turmoil. Perhaps in a place of moral despair, or at least inquietude and the “winter” of despair, Camus found that he had come seeking change, but the revolution he sought was already within him, happening new every day, just like the sunrise.

Similarly, the music utilizes a famous harmony and “mode of limited transposition” that Olivier Messaien, a French composer, often used to signify the divine. The inflexible, unchanging round-like counterpoint in places signifies both the years of madness and the joy of finding that lumiére, over and over again.

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