Written for and dedicated to the Silver Keys Trio

Score and Recording Coming Soon

Score Published Through Imagine Music Publishing

SILVER KEYS TRIO – ALL AMERICAN MUSIC

Center for New Music in San Francisco, Sept. 30, 2015 – 7:30pm
San Jose State University, October 1st, 2015 – 12:15pm
Sacramento State University, October 2nd, 2015 -4:00pm

Program Note: When granted the opportunity to write for the Silver Keys Trio’s instrumentation, my wife and I had just begun to expect our new daughter. I swung between exhaustive fragility and terrifying elation and still do with Alice now here and born. This text has become my much needed mantra, as anything I do, from parenting to music, is destined to fail without love. My deepest thanks go to the virtuosic Silver Keys Trio for organizing the commissioning consortium that brought about this seven movement piece.

I Might Speak
With Tongues of Angles
Yet Without Love
I
Have Now Become
A Clanging Cymbal
Resounding

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Jill Morgan Brenner’s – I Sing Words: The Poetry Project

 A collaboration between poets, composers, and performers alike; Brenner will be premiering an evening of art songs written by living composers and poets with pianist Anne Rainwater. In an effort to further music for classical singers to come, Brenner came up with the idea to fascilitate the creation of new and accesible music.

– THE CENTER FOR NEW MUSIC
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12TH 

– 70 WEST CLAY STREET
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13TH AT 5 PM

 

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was briefly famous in the 1910’s as a traveling singing poet who would chant or sing his own poetry while wandering through the United States. Yet later in life he faded into obscurity, often bartering his pamphlet “Rhymes to Be Traded for Bread” in exchange for food. Lindsay eventually commit suicide by ingesting Lysol. This setting of four poems was commissioned by Carrie Zhang and her Classical Trio Impromptu for their performances in the Bing Music Series at Stanford Hospital.

1. Unjust – video

“I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.”

2. A Sense of Humor – video

“No man should stand before the moon
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.

Nay, let us don the motley cap,
The jester’s chastened mien,
If we would woo that looking-glass
And see what should be seen.

O mirror on fair Heaven’s wall,
We find there what we bring.
So, let us smile in honest part
And deck our souls and sing.

Yea, by the chastened jest alone
Will ghosts and terrors pass,
And fays, or suchlike friendly things,
Throw kisses through the glass”

3. The Little Turtle – video

“There was a little turtle. He lived in a box. He swam in a puddle. He climbed on the rocks. He snapped at a mosquito. He snapped at a flea. He snapped at a minnow. And he snapped at me. He caught the mosquito. He caught the flea. He caught the minnow. But he didn’t catch me.”

4. Rain – video

“Each storm-soaked flower has a beautiful eye. And this is the voice of the stone-cold sky: ‘Only boys keep their cheeks dry. Only boys are afraid to cry. Men thank God for tears Alone with lost years.”

Score Coming Soon

This set of variations was written for oboist and friend, Lindsey Lyrenmann. It was designed as a launching point for improvisation during the communion portion of the December 21, 2014 service at Zion Lutheran Church in San Francisco. While it can of course be performed as written, each variation may also be shuffled in order to meet the unique pacing and aesthetic needs of the venue.

Score Published Through Imagine Music: Hovatter – 7 Variations on “Greensleeves”