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Arise, My Love, My Fair One

Tota pulchra es, Maria : Ah, how fair are you, O Mary

Emily! : from New England Musical Settings of the Poems of Emily Dickinson

The poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is especially appealing due to the wide range of topics, diversity of mood and peculiar imagination of the poet. The writings are reflective, passionate, witty, sensuous, observant, and ridiculously humorous. Her heart soars. Her mind pokes fun! Emily was truly a New Englander. Her poems are understated and compact. Her love of Nature focuses on small things- birds, bees, meadows and a pond.In creating the musical settings, the composer (herself a New Englander) endeavored to capture the spirit of the poetry, and of the poet, with songs diverse in style, and concise in form. Everything from romance to frogs is explored,briefly.Great delight is taken in creating musical translations of the colorful imagery: the letters floating off on the breeze ("My Letter to the World"): the shimmering moonlight ("The Moon and the Sea"): a frog croaking in a bog ("The Frog in the Bog"): hopeful birds hopping about ("Hope" with Feathers"): the boat of passion riding the waves and then settling into its mooring ("Passion"): the ship's cannon firing in celebration ("Joy"): and the tiniest, lightest gifts of Nature ("All I Have to Bring"). These are the poet's Letters to the World. She lived as a recluse, yet her words took flight-traveling the universe as messengers of the soul. Duration: 14:00

My People Are Rising

This text is part of a longer work by Mohja Kahf titled My People Are Rising: An unfinished poem begun in Spring 2011 for an unfinished Revolution begun in March 2011. It speaks so viscerally of the tragic events in Syria that it was impossible to imagine setting it with Western harmonies. And so the composer began an exploration of Arabic music, with its quarter-tone scales, its lack of vertical chordal structure, its abundantly ornamented heterophony. Since quarter-tones are not a part of our Western choral training, the scales are tempered a bit (resulting in a fair number of augmented seconds) and a violin is added to the melodic mix for pitch support. The voices and violinare accompanied by a doumbek player, who is highly encouraged to improvise: the written notation is only there as a guide. This piece is dark, dramatic, and powerful, yet not without triumph. Duration: 8:30