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

Tenor JACOB CHRISTOPHER and pianist KEVIN REEKS
Poetry by REBECCA MORGAN FRANK

Bind the body in bondage to God, the blood flow
slowed steals the quick out of the bullet's rip,

makes you unstoppable for that flight
of blade that smites the godless bodies.

A streak of dominos falling from your
welded touch, a stroke of devoted luck.

The moving holy body perforated by a useless
gun guides guerilla warfare: the jungle-buried bodies,

prone, your target, and your flash attack bates
the ineffective smack of bullet. Bodies lie.

Arms are in evolution, now created to cap
this newfound spectacle: a man who dies for love

of the afterlife, no country here his own.
Stories say that women passed, bound their breasts

and spun through town, whirling dervishes
wielding the kris. A fearless edge that gave birth

to the Colt .45, engineered to stop the juramentado.
The latest weapon in the battle of gods.

Juramentado

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

ARIANA STRAHL, soprano
CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
ALLEN TINKHAM, music director

"From Third Avenue On"
Djuna Barnes

And now she walks on out turned feet
Beside the litter in the street
Or rolls beneath a dirty sheet
       Within the town.
She does not stir to doff her dress,
She does not kneel low to confess,
A little conscience, no distress
       And settles down.

Ah God! she settles down we say;
It means her powers slip away
It means she draws back day by day
       From good or bad.
And so she looks upon the floor
Or listens at an open door
Or lies her down, upturned to snore
       Both loud and sad.

Or sits beside the chinaware,
Sits mouthing meekly in a chair,
With over-curled, hard waving hair
       Above her eyes.
Or grins too vacant into space—
A vacant space is in her face—
Where nothing came to take the place
       Of high hard cries.

Or yet we hear her on the stairs
With some few elements of prayers,
Until she breaks it off and swears
       A loved bad word.
Somewhere beneath her hurried curse,
A corpse lies bounding in a hearse;
And friends and relatives disperse,
       And are not stirred.

Those living dead up in their rooms
Must note how partial are the tombs,
That take men back into their wombs
       While theirs must fast.
And those who have their blooms in jars
No longer stare into the stars,
Instead, they watch the dinky cars—
       And live aghast.

Let Me Sing - I. From Third Avenue On

ARIANA STRAHL, soprano
CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
ALLEN TINKHAM, music director

"Winter Stars"
Sara Teasdale

I went out at night alone;
 The young blood flowing beyond the sea
Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—
 I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head
 From shadows shaken on the snow,
I saw Orion in the east
 Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,
 Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
I watched Orion as a girl
 Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
 The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
 The faithful beauty of the stars.

Let Me Sing - III. Songs for the People

Shammuramat reigned as the queen-regent of the Neo-Assyrian empire in the 9th century BC. At a time when female rule was unimaginable, she was accepted by her people by creating stability
following a time of strife, before her son came of age. She was likely the source of the later Greek legend of “Semiramis”, a mythical warrior-queen reputed to have conquered Asia, Libya and
Aethiopia.

This piece was commissioned by Caryn Jacobs and is gratefully dedicated to her. As board president of the Newberry Consort, Caryn served at time of stress and change. Under her leadership, the
Consort has grown its audience and pioneered innovative programming. One of her favorite moments in music is “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from Handel’s oratorio Solomon.

Shammuramat, Queen Of Assyria

Commissioned by SARA PARETSKY in memory of Courtenay Wright
Performed by countertenor THOMAS ALAAN and the BACH & BEETHOVEN EXPERIENCE
Poetry by JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
   Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
   That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
   Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
   Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Poem - REBECCA MORGAN FRANK
Soprano - ARIANA STRAHL
Piano - ERIC MALMQUIST

"Total Reflection of Light"

My body is a rock, a waterfall,
no, the fountain in the empty park,

its solitary spicket’s flow. Each day 
I cycle through the tubes, a part 

of me evaporating in open air, a part 
holding on to light, for only the sun 

can touch me now. Oh light caught– 
red, reflected– in my circular stream, 

shaped by what holds me in. I close 
my eyes, imagine my solitude pouring 

into the glass, lifted to another’s lips 
and filled with words and the taste

of the tongue that makes them.


- Rebecca Morgan Frank

Total Reflection of Light

Poetry - SARA TEASDALE
Soprano - ARIANA STRAHL
Piano - ERIC MALMQUIST

"Faults"

They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before, —
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.

-Sara Teasdale

Faults

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.

Eric Malmquist (Art Song)

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