Name: A Pickthall Triptych: Stars by Sonus Voices
Duration: 4 min 5 s
Description: Movement 3 from "A Pickthall Triptych" by Matthew Emery.

"The Tramps", Text: Robert Service, Music: Aaron Jensen.

Featured and recorded for Aaron's CD "From Sea to Sea", an original a cappella song cycle which pays tribute to Canadian poets from every province and territory across the country.

The Tramps

Movement 2 from "A Pickthall Triptych" by Matthew Emery.

A Pickthall Triptych: Song

Alexandra Smither, soprano
Suzy Smith, piano

In this song I imagine Penelope wandering the drafty, echoing ‘empty rooms’ of whatever fortress or palace protected and imprisoned her during her long wait for the return of her husband and her son. The image of a woman, waiting, is common in literature: her act of endurance requires bravery, courage, fortitude, even defiance. The woman who waits suffers, but most often silently; war takes a quiet, dreadful toll on those left behind. Such waiting takes other shapes: the long-distance relationship; the parent of the missing child; the widower. We always wait for those we love, heartstrings stretched taut across miles and years, oceans and continents. Penelope is often praised (condescendingly) for her loyalty, for being a good wife. But how often do we risk imagining her silent battle against her own mind – against hopelessness?

In her day Penelope was just as modern as we are now, so here she sings music that is modern in its hybridity: classical, minimalist, jazz, pop – art song and torch song, for lover and loved.

Penelope (for soprano and piano)

Movement 1 from "A Pickthall Triptych" by Matthew Emery.

A Pickthall Triptych: Thoughts

Movement 3 from "A Pickthall Triptych" by Matthew Emery.

A Pickthall Triptych: Stars

Two Friends Like Fireflies
Joseph Gregorio, composer | text by Mohja Kahf
Commissioned by the ACDA Women's Commissioning Consortium (Iris S. Levine, chairperson)

Published by Areté Music Imprints
www.aretemusicimprints.com
Catalog no. 1220

Cantala (Lawrence University)
Phillip Swan, cond.

Two Friends Like Fireflies | Joseph Gregorio

What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor

Tookah Sapper, soprano
Kelly Horsted, piano
text by Duncan McFarlane

Re-imagining coloratura and scat singing, this piece is also an homage to Harold Arlen’s 'Stormy Weather' (lyrics by Ted Koehler), which begins: 

Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain't together,
Keeps rainin' all the time

It’s a poignant love-song, one that Kalypso – the nymph/demi-god of Homer’s Odyssey – could well have sung. After the storm which shipwrecked him on his way home from Troy to Ithaca (and to his waiting wife, Penelope) Odysseus was swept on to Kalypso’s island, and she held him there (against his will, but not really) for seven years.

Both torch song and art song, Kalypso’s plea is set in a warm, tender, jazz-rich, Chopin-esque language, and there are many musical connections here with Penelope, particularly in both pieces’ middle sections, which reach for something more bare and visionary. Each woman calls out to Odysseus, tries to summon him back to her, and in this moment their music speaks in the same tongue.

A Pickthall Triptych: Stars

Sonus Voices

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