Poetry on Musical Wings June 16, 2012

Recently awarded the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, San Francisco Choral Artists and Artistic Director Magen Solomon close their 2011-2012 season with performances that showcase one of the most powerful and unique aspects of choral music: words. The 24-voice chamber chorus explores how more than 20 different composers give musical wings to sonnets, odes, riddles, and rhymes.

The wings can be light and airy, as in Katherine Saxon's Speed and Perfection, Paul Chihara's Under the Greenwood Tree, or Jerry Mueller's The Sun Rising. The wings can be strong and powerful, as in Russell Burnham's Though the World Change, Allen Shearer's Listen. Put on Morning, or Randall Thompson The Light of Stars. Or the wings can be like those of a beautiful swan, as in Henry Leslie's Charm me asleep, or Johannes Brahms' Nun stehn die Rosen.

Eager to support young talent, Magen Solomon founded the The New Voices Project competition for composers age 30 and under in 2005. "I wanted to encourage young composers to write for choir, and to help them learn -early- how to do it well," she says. SFCA's Composer-Not-in-Residence Matt Van Brink won the annual competition in 2006. This year's winners are Katherine Saxon of UC Santa Barbara and Daniel Galbreath of the University of Wyoming.

Daniel Galbreath illuminates the connection with Sara Teasdale's poem There Will Come Soft Rains:
"Back in junior high school, an instructor assigned Ray Bradbury's short story There Will Come Soft Rains, which centers on the Teasdale poem. Both story and poem have an unsettling sense of post-apocalyptic serenity. The simply-worded couplets and nature-based imagery are at odds with the direction the text ultimately goes. It creates a great deal of tension. I use some jazzier harmonies and off-kilter rhythms to underscore the blithe irony of the text, and of the natural elements in that text which are used to create the poem's didactic message."

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