Choral and Vocal
Spring and Fall
Written for the 2021 Choral Chameleon Summer Institute and featured on their 2024 Album CHANGING.
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844—1889)
Whether in Darkness or in Light
Winner of the 2019 Young Composers Showcase Award Sponsored by NCMEA.
My Light With Yours (Edgar Lee Masters)
But Men Loved Darkness Rather than Light (Richard Crashaw)
Invitation to Love (Paul Laurence Dunbar)
I
When the sea has devoured the ships,
And the spires and the towers
Have gone back to the hills.
And all the cities
Are one with the plains again.
And the beauty of bronze,
And the strength of steel
Are blown over silent continents,
As the desert sand is blown—
My dust with yours forever.
II
When folly and wisdom are no more,
And fire is no more,
Because man is no more;
When the dead world slowly spinning
Drifts and falls through the void—
My light with yours
In the Light of Lights forever!
-Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)
The world's light shines, shine as it will,
The world will love its darkness still.
I doubt though when the world's in hell,
It will not love its darkness half so well.
-Richard Crashaw (1612–1649)
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene’er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
Come when the year’s first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter’s drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.
-Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)
We’ll Go No More A-Roving
Written for the 2019 Interlochen Arts Camp. Premiered by the World Youth Honors Choir.
We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.
We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
We’ll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.
We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,
We’ll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.
—William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
To Winter
Written for the 2022 Choral Chameleon Summer Institute.
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes;
For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st
With storms; till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.
-William Blake (1757–1827)
As I Long to Voyage
La Mer
The sea flies beneath,
Envious of featherless wings.
O unbridled avian! how you must long to set foot
As I long to voyage! Heed no barnacled mast
Nor sheer drop, for you are as insurmountable as I am grounded!
—Adam Winograd (b. 2003)
Instrumental
Leviathan for String Quartet
The Hunt for Brass Quintet
Corrupted Dance for Electric Guitar and Piano
Woodland Lullaby for Cello, Marimba, and Piano
Two Bears Ordering Takeout for Cello, Marimba, and Piano
Hero on the Clock
for Horn, Trumpet, Trombone, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello