Eleven Reasons I Cried After My Son Was Born

ARIANA STRAHL - Soprano
ERIC MALMQUIST - Lyrics/Composer/Piano

"He's so beautiful and precious.
He doesn't deserve me, I'm awful.
He sneezed.
His bilibrubin was high.
He had a pee.
His bilirubin was stable.
Someone gifted us delivery.
Someone told us we would be amazing parents.
Someone made us incredible scones.
I made avocado toast.
Because I love my wife so much."

Eleven Reasons

Commissioned and performed by the CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS, ALLEN TINKHAM MUSIC DIRECTOR for the Ear Taxi Festival, October 2016.

This piece was conceived on a late fall road trip through some Midwestern states. It was in the middle of fall, and though the fields had just been stripped bare of corn, the trees were just beginning to turn and the sun shone through all the hours of our drive. I decided to write landscape music dedicated to the peculiar beauties of my homeland.

Months later, when I had the time to actually begin writing, I realized something about why that beauty is so peculiar – it’s almost entirely man-made. The land was sectioned off into a precise grid by the Northwest Ordinance, with most of our roads and streets following straight north-south or east-west lines for miles. What contours or forests there were have been plowed flat. Our mountains and cliffs are artificial – a steady rise of buildings from the suburbs ending abruptly at the Lake. It’s a human landscape – stark and unnatural, but also filled with memories.

CYSO

Prairie Music

From Jonah Sirota's upcoming album STRONG SAD, this track features the classical improv duo Mondegreen, consisting of Jonah and composer/organist Kurt Knecht.

CURRENTly

This is a recording of the premiere performance of "Folio 2", my second song cycle for voice and viola, written specifically for and performed here by mezzo-soprano Megan Ihnen and violist Michael Hall.

The recording was made at Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, MI, which hosted my concert presenting organization ÆPEX Contemporary Performance for a very special concert featuring Megan and Michael on April 13, 2017.

"Folio 2" has a second, unique, connection to Literati, which is one of Ann Arbor's newest bookstores, and, yet, also one of the city's most beloved. These songs set texts written by Literati's patrons on a typewriter that sits in the bookstore's basement. I assembled each work from fragments typed by dozens of strangers drawn together by Literati's incredible selection of books and community magnetism.

In addition to being the second work I've written for Michael and Megan, "Folio 2" marks the culmination of a years-long collaboration with Mike and Hilary Gustafson, Literati's proprietors, who were nothing but supportive of both my initial idea to set their typewriter's texts to music, and also to have that music premiered in a concert at their bookstore.

Folio 2

Performed by mezzo-soprano ERIN MOLL (erinmoll.com) and pianist TALAR KHOSDEGHIAN.

Poetry by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967):

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.

A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next
     month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go--I stay here sitting on the
     back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down.

          Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

On the Way - III. Back Yard

Performed by mezzo-soprano ERIN MOLL (erinmoll.com) and pianist TALAR KHOSDEGHIAN.

Poetry by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967):

 Come you, cartoonists,
          Hang on a strap with me here
          At seven o'clock in the morning
          On a Halsted street car.

               Take your pencils
               And draw these faces.

Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,
That pig-sticker in one corner--his mouth--
That overall factory girl--her loose cheeks.

               Find for your pencils
               A way to mark your memory
               Of tired empty faces.

               After their night's sleep,
               In the moist dawn
               And cool daybreak,
               Faces
               Tired of wishes,
               Empty of dreams.

On the Way - IV. Halsted Street Car

Performed by mezzo-soprano ERIN MOLL (erinmoll.com) and pianist TALAR KHOSDEGHIAN.

Poetry by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967):

Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,	
Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers	
And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.	
Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike	
Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here	       
And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge	
Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone,	
Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know?	
How much do the wisest of the world’s men know about where the massed human procession is going?	
 
You have heard the mob laughed at?	        
I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough?	
And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea?

On the Way - V. On The Way

Performed by mezzo-soprano ERIN MOLL (erinmoll.com) and pianist TALAR KHOSDEGHIAN.

Poetry by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967):

PASSERS-BY,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blend
To form the city's afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love.
Records of great wishes slept with,
     Held long
And prayed and toiled for. .

     Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

Chicago Songs - Passers-By

Glass City Singers is an auditioned ensemble of singers aged 16-30 based in Toledo, OH. We exclusively perform music from the 21st century, written by living composers.

Concert #2

"On the Breakwater" - Eric Malmquist (b. 1985)

from compilation 'Intervals' (Piano Day 2018)

download/buy: https://modernarecords.bandcamp.com/album/intervals

composed & produced by Manos Milonakis
piano, wurlitzer and synth: Manos Milonakis

Manos Milonakis - Margarette

Wicker Park Choral Singers LIVE
June 10, 2018
Wicker Park Lutheran Church
Chicago

SLEEP
The evening hangs beneath the moon,
A silver thread on darkened dune.
With closing eyes and resting head
I know that sleep is coming soon.

Upon my pillow, safe in bed,
A thousand pictures fill my head.
I cannot sleep, my mind’s a-flight;
And yet my limbs seem made of lead.

If there are noises in the night,
A frightening shadow, flickering light,
Then I surrender unto sleep,
Where clouds of dream give second sight,

What dreams may come, both dark and deep,
Of flying wings and soaring leap
As I surrender unto sleep,
As I surrender unto sleep.

Charles Anthony Silvestri, 1965-present

Sleep by Eric Whitacre

Eric Malmquist (b. 1985) writes earnestly heartfelt and engaging music. He draws on a deep love of early music and modern influences to produce works that are focused and emotional.

He has been commissioned by the Chicago Composers Orchestra, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, tubist Scott Tegge, the International Chamber Artists, the Newberry Consort and the Wicker Park Choral Singers.

His commissioned work Prairie Music for CYSO was featured on Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival in October 2016 and at Midwest Clinic in December 2016. CCO and WPCS co-commissioned his Blemish’d Muse, a twenty-minute work for choir and orchestra, in 2016. His song cycle If You Travel Far Enough was the very first commission of the ICA, and was featured on Live from WFMT in 2015. Michael Hall premiered his Sonata for Viola and Piano in 2014, and Gaudete Brass premiered his Three Preludes in 2013.

His music has been performed outside of Chicago on both coasts and in Texas, and has been featured repeatedly on 98.7WFMT. His music has been recorded by VOX 3 on the disc “New Song” and by pianist Jonathan Hannau.

Prairie Music

EricMalmquist

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