New VOCES8 commission

I’m honored to be asked to write again for VOCES8 and their Live From London Christmas festival!

It’s always a challenge to write for 8 voices, even if they are the best in the world. How much do you spread out? How much do you focus the listener in? I played with a lot of color in this piece, and just after the opening soprano line, a cascading ii chord invites the audience on a little ride. It should be really lovely. (At least it is in my head.)

For the text, I reached out to my friend Milton Brasher-Cunningham. The work is called Solstice and I think it perfectly captures who and where we are as days get shorter and colder in this COVID year…in need of more hope, more connection, more wonder.

More on this soon…in the meantime, click on Big Ben for tickets to the festival!

Solstice

come gaze at the firefly stars 
sing softly into this silent night 
oh that we had a ladder to make
a constellation of ourselves
a consolation of ourselves
come sit in the dark with me

come sit in the dark with me
and look at that moon that
is so at home in the night
let us reach deep into the
pockets of our souls for
scraps of hope and wonder