top of page
MUSIC
ONCE A WHILE IN TIME (2023)
TENOR, PIANO
7 min.
A set of three songs drawn from letters by the American public to Jackeline Onassis Kennedy in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, combined with fragments of Willie Nelson's song "Ain't it Funny How Time Slips Away" which appeared on the Top 40's charts the week Kennedy was killed.
A choral cycle based on the Novgorod Codex — a book of Ukranian psalms from 999 A.D. overwritten hundreds of times with heretical sermons by an excommunicated Pagan missionary — built on echos of ancient hymn fragments, the first words of a now-forgotten language, a banished monk’s apocalyptic visions of a distant future, and scraps of text by contemporary writers in exile.
A tapestry of choral images that freely arrange the 1,451 words from poet Kazim Ali's English translation of Marguerite Duras’ proto-screenplay L’amour, loosely based on her youth as a colonial settler in Saigon and the France she “returned” to for the first time just as the Nazis came to power across Europe, each ravaged by occupation.
An anti-cantata based on author David Laskin’s account of the Children’s Blizzard of 1888. Combines fragments of Norwegian folk song transcriptions from the tralling and Hardanger fiddle traditions, as well as sonifications of weather data fashioned into clouds of orchestral noise and wordless vocal chorales.
bottom of page