Program Notes
Ask the Orange (2022) was written for the 2022 Seraphic Fire Professional Choral Institute at the Aspen Music Festival and School. The piece explores the pairing of senses, actions, objects, and atmospheres that ordinarily—syntactically or physically—would not go together. These pairings evoke the many colors present in the poetry while questioning our day-to-day division of the five senses and the dynamic ways in which music might reconnect them. Many thanks to the Seraphic Fire Professional Choral Institute for bringing Ask the Orange to life.
Additional Information
Won second place for the Institute for Choral Creativity Composition Competition Prize (2024)
TEXT
I hear the blue today.
I feel the sound of it all over me—
The smell of green
An angular reprieve from turquoise lemon
Sweet with silent chatter,
Water purple with pine matter.
After pink, I listen
To the feel of scarlet memory
Ablaze with pungent sighs
And misty melody.
Envelope me
Without regret for moonlit fleeting density;
Surround magenta callings;
Fall on windswept red,
On whispered white,
On darkening delight.
I might hear blue today
But yesterday was verdant
And tomorrow seems quite yellow.
I can hear the liquid night
While brushing past it in the floral rain.
I ask the orange to remain.
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