Text by Vera Lugo

Leonora wept and said

“All the world is in my head!

How am I to sleep?” she cried,

As the world went slowly by.

All the colors, lights, and sounds

Keep the girl from settling down

Into her waiting bed

Will she ever rest her head?

No one in the world will know

When she finally sleeps; and so

Leonora cries and says,

“I will never go to bed!”

In dreams we see ourselves from a different perspective

And the things that we knew have changed

But somewhere beyond the horizon that glows

The moon is the same

She watches us sleep

She follows our stories

She knows of our triumphs and fears,

And keeps them safe

And nobody knows of the moon’s devotion

As she glides over the ocean

But one little face is watching her back

Leonora is watching her back from the twilight of sleep!

She heaves a great sigh and opens her eyes wide

Leonora cries and says,

“All the world’s STILL in my head!

Why must I be forced to sleep

When the moon is watching me?”

No one but the moon will know

When she

finally sleeps and so

Leonora cries and says,

“I will never go to bed!”

Program note

When no one will know when you go to bed, why should you? Leonora came to life in three stages: first as a poem written during the 2011 Southwest blackout, then as a song for toy pianoand solo voice, and finally as a choral piece featuring a cyclical ostinato and tongue-in-cheek yawning. Leonora is a little girl who doesn’t want to go to bed; meanwhile, the omniscient moon watches over the Earth. It is a diorama of the small and the large, the micro and the macro, humanity and the universe. — Vera Lugo

Text by Trevor F. Shaw

I seek purpose and connection with my world. I wish my place in it was more obvious.

I am praised for my uniqueness,

But it’s that which isolates me.

Sometimes I wish that I was simple,

And could go through life unquestioning, Never desiring anything better.

In ignorance there is safety,

But that isn’t who I am.

I need the ones who love me

(And I know you love me most)

To grant me understanding,

And remind me of my worth.

For you have opened up my eyes

To see the world in color.

In moments of relief I know

That in you, I am home.

Program Note

I felt compelled by this text because the message coincides with a lot of my beliefs, and the message of “world in color” especially coincides with my synesthesia when I compose. — Evan Blaché

Text by Walt Whitman

No labor-saving machine,

Nor discovery have I made,

Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest

to found hospital or library,

Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,

Nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-shelf,

But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,

For comrades and lovers.

Program note

This piece is based upon “No Labor-Saving Machine,” by Walt Whitman, from his celebrated and beloved “Leaves of Grass.” The lyrics express ideas about achievements in life. What might we leave behind for future generations; an invention, a monetary grant, a deed, or a literary work? Ultimately, in this poem, one leaves a gift of music; a beautiful song that rings through the air to be captured by the hearts of people who love.

The steady accompaniment in the piano is meant to symbolize a walk through life, with the various key, and tonal center shifts representing those challenges, joys, and surprises that our journey brings us. A meter and key change occurs at the word “carols,” followed by a crescendo to “vibrating through the air.” This section symbolizes a realization of, and love for that thing which we indeed may have left behind for humanity. This text is repeated a cappella, and rubato, in a loving and dramatic setting. The piece briefly returns to the steady ‘walk’ in the accompaniment, and comes to a final major chord resolve with an undulating, shimmering cluster in the voices. — William V. Malpede

Solo: Katrina Saporsantos

Traditional Text

Duerme, duerme, negrito [Sleep, sleep, little black one,]

Que tu mama e’tá en el campo, negrito [your mama’s in the fields, little one.]

Drume, drume mobila [sleep, little one]

Que tu mama está en el campo, mobila [your mama’s in the fields, little one.]

Te va a traé’ codo’nice’ para tí [She's going to bring quail for you]

Te va a traé’ rica fruta fre’ca para tí [She's going to bring fresh fruit for you]

Te va a traé’ car’ne de ce’do para tí [She’s going to bring pork for you]

Te va a traé’ mucha’ cosa’ para tí [She’s going to bring many things for you.]

Y si el negro no se duerme [And if the black one doesn't go to sleep,]

Viene e’ diablo blanco [the white devil will come]

¡Y zás! Le come la patita, chica bú [and zap! he’ll eat your little foot, chica bú; ]

Apura, chica bú! [hurry, chica bú!]

Duerme, duerme, negrito [Sleep, sleep, little black one,]

Que tu mama e’tá en el campo, negrito [your mama’s in the fields, little one.]

Trabajando duramente, trabajando, sí [She’s working hard, working, yes]

Trabajando y no le pagan, trabajando, sí [working and they don’t pay her, working, yes]

Trabajando y va tosiendo, trabajando, sí [working and she’s coughing, working, yes]

Pa’l negrito chiquitito [for her sweet little black one]

Pa’l negrito, sí [for her sweet little black one, yes]

Program Note

In this lullaby found and made famous by Atahualpa Yupanqui, one of the most popular Latin American composers of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, the little black child is given impossible promises and warned of dire consequences, while the sad plight of the sick, hard-working mother is depicted in word and song.

According to our translator Carlos Lopez, “Negrito literally means ‘little black one,’ or, in modern usage, simply ‘darling’ or ‘dear little one.’ But other words in the text leave no doubt about the setting of this ‘black’ lullaby. The omission of the ‘r’ in trae’ (traer), ce’do (cerdo), and ca’ne (carne) and the omission of the ‘s’ in e’ta (esta) and fre’ca (fresca) all reflect the black spanish pronunciation of the uneducated slave culture. The references to the brutal practice of cutting a person’s foot off to prevent escape and to the sick mother working hard in the fields and not getting paid can only be understood in terms of the dehumanizing conditions slaves endured for centuries in many parts of the New World.” — Maria Guinand

Solo: Katrina Saporsantos

Text by Samih Choukeir

If my voice departs, your throats (i.e. voices) will not

I look unto tomorrow and my heart is with you

If the singer goes (dies), the songs will remain

bringing together the broken and suffering hearts

Program note

Shireen Abu-Khader is a Palestinian Jordanian Canadian composer, arranger, conductor, and music educator who, through her organization Dozan World, introduces to the international community the music of the beloved Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq) region. She first heard Lao Rahal Soti, the protest song by Samih Choukeir, during her work in Ramallah in 1998. The song originally had a fast but march-like feel, yet the melody and the lyrics registered in her mind like a calm, quiet, meditative moment; the words, especially, resonated deeply with her beliefs. With this in mind, she created an arrangement that was quieter and more hopeful. She personally dedicates this song to the Palestinian ongoing struggle for freedom and dignity, and hopes that the haunting melody of this song opens a space for those who have felt marginalized due to socio-political situations to be heard.

Words based on an ancient Chinese poem by Li Bai

​​Moonlight in front of my bed,

Is it frost on ground I guess?

Lift up my eyes, gazing at the moon

Low down my head, thinking of my home

Program note

Thinking of My Home, a work for treble voices, was commissioned by the American Composers Forum as a part of its ChoralQuest® Program. In this piece, she sets to music a famous Chinese poem with the same title by Li Bai, a poet during the Tang Dynasty. Dr. Chen is a prolific composer who is a master at blending both Chinese and Western musical traditions; Thinking of My Home is a perfect example of this as, throughout the piece, we hear sounds reminiscent of the Chinese two-stringed instrument erhu and the nose flute woven into traditional Western choral voice production.

Adrienne Inglis, djembe

Text based on a Maguinadanaoan chant (Southern Philippines)

Messenger bird,

Messenger bird,

Tell my beloved I am not too far away.

Program note

Papanok A Lakitan by multi-awarded Filipino American composer Nilo Alcala is but one of the many works he has written that is a testament to how he is carving a legacy for Philippine Arts through his music. The song is unapologetically Filipino. Sung in Maguindanaon, a Southern Philippine language, Papanok A Lakitan uses the human voice to mimic the sounds of a kulintang, a set of eight tuned knobbed gongs played with two sticks of softwood. The work’s rhythmic and percussive patterns act as a drone that a simple melody is superimposed on. The interlocking rhythms typically found in Philippine indigenous music are also present in this virtuosic piece.

Soli: Jennifer Hymel, Bethany Ammon, Cami Everitt, Rebecca Stidolph, Mikaela Pace, Christa Tumlinson, Carol Brown

Text by Elise Witt with the staff of Refugee Family Services in Clarkston, GA

My journey, your journey, my journey, yours.

Sung in English, Kurdish, Arabic, Mano (Liberia), Amharic (Ethiopia), Bosnian, Vietnamese, and Somali

Program note

My Journey Yours was originally commissioned by a multi-disciplinary arts project of the same name with Refugee Family Services in Clarkston, GA. There are three sections to the piece that represent refugees and immigrants moving away from their homeland, the seemingly endless days of waiting, and finally the challenge of creating a new life in America. It is a musical collage of sorts in that the composer Elise Witt took musical phrases from songs refugees remembered from their childhood (like lullabies, children’s songs, and musical games), placed the words “my journey yours” in their native language over these musical phrases, and then stacked them on top of each other. The ending of the piece represents their new life and home in the US, with everyone telling about their shared journey in a language they all can now call theirs.

Soli: Rosa Mondragón Harris and Frances Jimenez

Text excerpted from the poem of the same title by Jose P. Rizal

Dry leaf that flies at random

till it's seized by a wind from above:

so lives on earth the wanderer,

without north, without soul, without country or love!

Impelled by a hand invisible,

he shall wander from place to place;

memories shall keep him company

of loved ones, of happy days.

The pilgrim shall return to his country,

shall return perhaps to his shore;

and shall find only ice and ruin,

perished loves, and graves nothing more.

Begone, wanderer! In your own country,

a stranger now and alone!

Let the others sing of loving,

who are happy but you, begone!

Begone, wanderer! Look not behind you

nor grieve as you leave again.

Begone, wanderer: stifle your sorrows!

the world laughs at another's pain.

Program note

Canto del viajero is a musical setting of excerpts from the poem of the same name by Filipino writer and polymath Dr. Jose P. Rizal. In the poem, Rizal, who used the power of his pen to fight the oppression of Filipinos during Spain's 333-year colonization, talks about anticipating the loneliness of being a stranger, all alone in his homeland as he was about to go back to the Philippines after many years of living in Europe. The lyrics had a very deep impact with composer Benjamin Dia, so he felt very drawn to use it for this commission. Musically, he conceptualized the work to feel like a soliloquy. He envisioned a strong, emotion-filled voice (reminiscent of Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa) to take on the role of the poet who sings about their fear, loneliness, and anxiety; a second solo voice of different timbre that echoes the poet’s sentiment; and for a lush bed of sound from the chorus that provides a strong harmonic anchor and variation in the texture of the work.

Dia very skillfully crafts the music to reflect emotions in the text. The melody has a never-tiring forward motion that can be interpreted as time moving so quickly. The shifting meter from 6/4 to 5/4 underscores the underlying feelings of discomfort and uncertainty that the poet feels, while the sixteenth notes that can mostly be found in the lines of the altos sounds like a heart-racing. When the chorus takes on their “solo” portion where they sing about the poet returning to their country, it feels heavier, and like the “committee in one’s head”, the voice of worry or anxiety or fear, is getting louder. This is a work that leans very heavily on the loneliness and agony built into the text. These feelings, for someone who’s been away from their country for so long, never goes away no matter how many times they try to convince themselves that they’re way past them. In the final verse sung by the poet, we hear them saying one thing out loud while all that time, underneath them, their “committee” is repeatedly saying a very different thing: “amores perdidos, sepulcros, no mas”, that they’ll be coming home to a country of “...perished loves, and graves, nothing more”.

Soli: Bethany Ammon, Wravan Godsoe, Maureen Papovich, Deirdre Spainhour

The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be oneself, and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities. — Emma Goldman, 1906

Text — The Way We Meet (Nakweshkodaadidaa) by Margaret Noodin

Long ago in the mixing

we were shaken

in every direction

different children

of the sky and the land.

To survive now we must

be at peace in our hearts

Nisidotawdizoying / understand one another

and bravely remember

we are all, one by one, cousins.

Let’s meet one another

here now on earth before

we become heavenly ancestors

wearing a necklace of stars

visible to our heirs.

Program note

Commissioned by Inversion Da Capo for its Inversion at the Library concert in April 2024, The Way We Meet (2024) sets excerpts from the poem of the same name by Margaret Noodin from her book of bilingual Anishinaabemowin/English poetry, Weweni. The narrative spans the creation arc, from the beginning of time through the emergence of organisms and proliferation of species. The challenge we face is living together peacefully with all beings in order to leave behind a legacy of understanding and love. The piece opens with a bit of an uncomfortable pentatonic scale and haunting vocal solos, followed by G minor pentatonic with a tenacious rhythmic ostinato, closing with rich divisi harmonies and aleatoric texture.

Text by Melissa Dunphy inspired by the work of Grace Lee Boggs

New dreams are born in questions.

How do we transform ourselves?

How do we transform our world?

What do we need?

What do we want?

What is the difference?

How do we reconnect with the rhythms of nature?

Should we do something just because we can?

What is the purpose of education?

What does it mean to care?

How do we create community?

Why is community a revolutionary idea?

How do we re-civilize our society?

How do we grow our souls?

How do we take heart of grace?

Program note

Melissa Dunphy is a composer of political and vocal art (classical) music based in Philadelphia. New Dreams was born out of her admiration for the work of the Chinese American civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs who dedicated her life to political causes, particularly the Black American struggle, and to the question of how one can create a better society and a better world. Melissa kept getting the song "Amazing Grace" stuck in her head and for a long time resisted incorporating it into the music, until she watched a documentary on Boggs where she pauses under a wall with a graffiti tag that read "Amazing Grace" and roars with laughter. After that, she felt as though she was given permission from beyond the grave to quote the hymn.

Text by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow

when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel

of singleness, feather lost from the tail

of a bird, swirling onto a step,

swept away by someone who never saw.

it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,

slept by itself, knew how to raise a

see-you-later hand. But skin felt.

it was never seen, never known as

a land on the map, nose like a city,

hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque

and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.

Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

Love means you breathe in two countries.

And skin remembers — silk, spiny grass,

deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.

Even now, when skin is not alone,

it remembers being alone and thanks something larger

that there are travelers, that people go places

larger than themselves.

Program note

Mari Esabel Valverde is a Texas-based trans Latina composer who is making an incredible mark on the American choral scene with her genius take on harmony, texture, pacing, and careful yet bold setting of thought-provoking text. Originally commissioned for a consortium of 14 high school, collegiate, community and professional choral ensembles, Skin is Mari’s expert setting of the poem “Two Countries” by the Palestinian German American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Mari’s composer note about Skin sets the perfect tone to the piece. She writes: “”Skin” addresses themes of healing, resilience, passage, and travel. Without mention of any particular name, age, gender, or race, the protagonist “Skin” acknowledges past traumas and ultimately expresses a profound feeling of gratitude “that there are travelers, that people go places larger than themselves.” … A single line of text is sung twice, “Love means you breathe in two countries,” in honor of the two worlds indicated in the title of the poem. …because we have the capacity to heal, we need not abandon a part of ourselves when we move to nourish another part of humanity thirsting for life.”

Soli: Maureen Papovich, McKenna King, Meredith Winford, Cami Everitt

Text by Ibtisam Barakat

I. Tea Invitation

I write for my heart

Has become a country

And I want all people

To live in it.

I make space by emptying

All corners of fear,

I make peace by

Making a cup of tea

For my story and yours,

Hot tea and mint

I have meant to invite you over

To my heart.

Do you like your tea

With sugar?

II. Alphabets of My Life

I live my life

In two alphabets

On the line

Arabic runs

From right to left

On the line English runs

From left to right

Two worlds, breathless, Running towards

Each other ...

It's a matter of time

Before they meet

And rest,

In each other's hearts.

III. Song of the Zaytoon Trees* (O Live!)

Tell me who you are

And what your heart loves

I will tell you who I am and

Who my father was.

He built homes

And loved Zaytoon trees.

O'live. O live. Forever. O live!

I build hope,

Tend the orchard

And the song of the Zaytoon

That runs through the leaves

And returns—

O live! O live!

*Zaytoon trees are olive trees

Program note

Hot Tea, Mint and Olives is a multi-movement work by Kareem Roustom, a Syrian American composer whose genre-crossing collaborations include works for symphony orchestras, popular music, and contemporary dance. In his setting of these poems by Palestinian American author and poet Ibtisam Barakat, Roustom includes elements of classical and folk music from the Arab world, specifically the Near East. He employs vocalizations of hand drum (darbouka) and tambourine (riqq) sounds in the first movement, blends Arabic and English alphabets in the second, and bases the third movement on a Lebanese and Palestinian folk dance called the dabke’. The resulting work is a joyous celebration of the pluralism of identities immigrants and refugees forever hold.

Jordan Walsh, percussion

Text by Jimmy Kachulis

Verse 1

Fragile seed planted deep

In the ancient soil

Soon you grew from your roots

to the sun

Chorus

African Violet tell your story

African Violet come transform me

You’re the one who can guide my light, my life

My African Violet

Verse 2

Soon the rains came and they

Tried to beat you down

Struggled hard to stand tall

Through the storms

Chorus

Verse 3

Now the time has come to climb

To the sky

Show the world, show us all

What you are

Chorus

Coda

Inspire me my African Violet

Program Note

African Violet is a musical depiction of the african violet flower, as a symbol of the indomitable African spirit that has overcome so much. It is one of the fruits of my long term research into the music and culture of the Ewe people of Southern Ghana. Various versions of the themes are combined in multiple counterpoints on traditional Ewe percussion parts, orchestrated for trombones. Call and Response patterns based on Ewe concepts happen among the instruments and between solo instruments and the ensemble, bringing the entire piece to a thrilling climax. Although initially designed to be sung by a singer primarily of African descent, it can be sung by any singers, as a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit to confront and, ultimately, to triumph over any obstacles. It's dedicated to my teacher, Master Drummer Godwin Agbeli of the Ewe people.