Harvard-Westlake Upper School brings it home.
Tag: choral music
“I Will Arise”
Harvard-Westlake presents their Spring Choral Concert, with special guest Shawn Kirchner, composer and singer-songwriter (pictured). Free admission.
Finding home
On Saturday, April 28 at 7:30pm, I will direct a spring choral concert with the Harvard-Westlake Choirs entitled “I Will Arise.” Joined by composer, singer-songwriter, and folk music expert Shawn Kirchner, we explore the musical intersections between Scotch-Irish, Appalachian, and Black American cultures as we consider what it means to find home within ourselves when circumstances drive us far away from the physical homes we know and love. We learn what enables us to rise and redefine what the word “home” can mean and where home can exist. And we discover what binds us together in our search for that home, that longed-for place of simple beauty and peace and timelessness that frees us from despair, loss, and pain. We consider the colorful poetry of 19th century Irish poet William Butler Yeats as he describes his desire to go to such a place:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
– “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats
Do You Hear Her? Music for the Voices of Silenced Women
My piece “Lady in Blue” will receive its world premiere. – I was glad to give voice to poetry about one of the most painful experiences a woman can face. It is not an experience with which I am personally acquainted. But Ntozake Shange‘s words about abortion tapped a deep resonance within me. I was 16 years old when I first read these words. At the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts my friend and classmate Gloria Williams felt compelled to dance this poetry to life. She asked me to compose the music. The music came to me instantaneously, as if a desperate woman was singing this song right into my ear. The words, “and nobody came, cuz nobody knew” still strike me. The physical pain, the blood, the intense fear, the profound loneliness in a keeping such an unbearable secret: this is a trauma that maybe never heals. Like I said, it’s not an experience with which I am personally acquainted. But it resonates deeply for me, not just because I’m a woman, but because I’m a human being.
