The Hollow: III. Hollow

Poetry by Robin Beth Schaer
Holdfast 
The dead are for morticians & butchers
to touch. Only a gloved hand. Even my son
will leave a grounded wren or bat alone
like a hot stove. When he spots a monarch
in the driveway he stares. It’s dead,
I say, you can touch it. The opposite rule:
butterflies are too fragile to hold
alive, just the brush of skin could rip
a wing. He skims the orange & black whorls
with only two fingers, the way he learned
to feel the backs of starfish & horseshoe crabs
at the zoo, the way he thinks we touch
all strangers. I was sad to be born, he tells me,
because it means I will die. I once loved someone
I never touched. We played records & drank
coffee from chipped bowls, but didn’t speak
of the days pierced by radiation. A friend
said: Let her pretend. She needs one person
who doesn’t know. If I held her, I would
have left bruises, if I undressed her, I would
have seen scars, so we never touched
& she never had to say she was dying.
We should hold each other more
while we are still alive, even if it hurts.
People really die of loneliness, skin hunger
the doctors call it. In a study on love,
baby monkeys were given a choice
between a wire mother with milk
& a wool mother with none. Like them,
I would choose to starve & hold the soft body.

Holdfast: IV. If I Held Her

Holdfast: III. Let Her Pretend

Holdfast: II. He Tells Me

Holdfast: I. The Dead Are For Morticians

Poetry by Anna Gatdula
Touch the Water
at the water’s fringe, soft waves. the man-made cliff’s edge, old concrete blocks from old streets that cars once drove over and now we climb down. there are two sources of night light: the moon and the fluorescent safety lamp across
the water’s curve at the beach across the point,
Touch the water, she says. I want you
to feel how cold it is. it is cold.
she wants to fall in, she wants to feel
the cold lake constrict the veins at the surface of her skin. a gasp, grasp. she wants you
to beg the water to take you, too.

Program Notes
The Promontory Point is a lush, man-made peninsula jutting out into the wide blue of Lake Michigan. The “Point” was built from landfill and protected by a seawall made from limestone blocks and recycled concrete blocks of road. During the pandemic, it offered a place of verdant respite for South Side residents. Socially distanced picnics, barbecues, and gatherings scattered the point. The poetry of “Touch the Water” depicts one such gathering, though rather than a scene of social assembly it depicts a moment of romantic ambivalence. The baritone voice and solo cello intersect and crisscross depicting the tension between the woman and “you.” The dual sources of light, from the moon and the surveillance streetlight, are depicted in the cello’s open chords. In the climax of the piece, the woman takes on the mythical presence of the siren calling “you” to the water, whose waves undulate like the cello’s tremolo.

Touch The Water (poetry by Anna Gatdula)

In the Desert (I cannot Fall Backwards Like That)

In the Desert (End)

How to Be Silent
(to remind myself it’s okay)
Quiet mornings
Screaming thoughts
But mute until I wake
It’s okay
To be silent
In the stillness is great
Hope
In the peace where
No noise interrupts
The deep
Thoughts sing
It’s okay
To be silent
Black letters on a page
Say more than a soundwave
It’s okay
To be silent
In the calm air
Ideas stir
In the darkness life
Shines bright
More than ever
In a world of noise
Clamoring clashing crashing
I hold hands
With my still lips
 
And remind myself
It’s okay to be silent

My Still Lips: II. How To Be Silent

LETTERBOARD
My thoughts are confined to a simple page of letters
No sounds express my heart
Except the rhythmic
Beat I tap one word at a time
Thump thump my heartbeat
Only sound loud to me
But my fingers tap and the
World can hear it
Letterboard language shouts out
In a silent prison
Break
I spell out my heart
Beats, I reach for letters like musicians
Play music
Like orators drum out stories
I scream across the page
I am heard tap tap tap
And my ideas are released
Like a trapped scream
I am heard through my letters
I make room
I make space
I am heard
In a sound world
Listen to my tap tap tap

My Still Lips: I. Letterboard

Alice in Wonderland
 
We are too big
to love flowers
Our hands built for spoons
and buttons
and noses for lion-wide
city smells
And not the tinkle
of baby’s breath
 
When we read about
flowers and look
at them painted
we know of our want
to be miniature
 
and not vast
like everyone seems to
have thought. Imagine
straw-fine legs
taking us through gardens
of flowers darkening
out the sun

Tales of Imagination is a song cycle about the fantastical elements of various characters from famous childhood stories. Jenna wanted to dive into the psyche of these characters through prose: Alice (Alice in Wonderland), James (James and the Giant Peach), and Willy Wonka (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). In each of these texts there is an element of grandeur that links these stories. James, although a young boy, wants to escape reality no matter the cost. Alice wants to be able to experience life from perceptions not attainable by man. Willy wants to create a world made of chocolate, something that one could only dream of.  Place yourself in the mindset of James, Alice, and Willy to create something unearthly that can't be conceptualized in a logical sense. I invite you to experience their fanciful naivety. 



Tales Of Imagination  Alice In Wonderland

How To Survive Vesuvius 
You are eating dinner
with the tumult, 
because you’ve refused to leave.
 Like summer, it blooms hard;
onwards the ash
 onwards the sound 
onwards the vertical sweeps. 
The sun is covered in bees 
the trees fall 
the walls roar with weight 
and the coal-colored world meets at 
your door.

I wanted to write a piece that would combine rhythm, melody and harmony in a way that would sparkle with energy. With this as a starting point I asked my friend Jenna Lanzaro to write me the text for this work. Her and I have worked together on many commissions over the years and ironically enough our first one we collaborated on was eight years ago for the Commack Chamber Choir, the ensemble for whom this piece was commissioned. When she showed me the text, I immediately felt a connection. Having been to Pompeii I have seen the remains of people frozen in their natural state with the exact facial expressions of when the eruption occurred. The opening motive, “You are eating dinner with the tumult” is a cell that germinates into an overwhelming force. I wanted the opening motive to represent lava gradually enveloping this person’s world around them. The haunting harmonies and melodies gradually unfold into a complex cacophonous climax and 

How to Survive Vesuvius (November 2015)


The clarinet’s timbres through the different registers remind me of the sounds of the harbor. Sea Calls is a soundscape depicting a harbor at dusk. Harbors have a sense of nostalgia and eeriness because you never quite know when the ships will be returning. In the piece there is a motive that is used to beckon to the ships, at points the conversation is reciprocated and others times it is an unanswered call. Right before the premiere of this work my grandmother had passed which gave the piece new meaning to me. It is a means of communicating with those who we cannot communicate with in the traditional sense. Listen deeply into the silences, for silence is not just a lack of sound but a response itself.


Sea Calls (November 2015)

The venus flytrap is a unique carnivorous plant that lures its prey through its physical and chemical components, resulting in consumption. These plants have a sensuous quality to them that I wanted to highlight in my piece, Clutch of Venus. The first movement paints the scene of the chaos that ensues in the jungle, constant fear from becoming preyed upon.  The second movement creates a calm, almost static introduction that represents the stagnant quality of these plants. The overlaying melody depicts the sensual allure that these plants possess.  As the motives develop, the harmonic and rhythmic material becomes complex culminating to a final “snapping” motion of the plant. The piece ends on the opening motive but displaced in a higher register to remind us of the looming, inevitable consumptions to come.






Clutch Of Venus:  II. Lull And Lure (2015)

These Two Very Nights
Poetry by Danielle Christian

THESE TWO VERY NIGHTS UNTIL FIRST
THERE WOULD BE NO WITHOUT
HAD ME BY THE WINGS DAY-LIGHT.
FLIGHT NOR FLUTTER, PLIGHT.

These Two Very Nights

Wai Wun Ki, clarinet;
Crystal Kim, cello

This duo explores a musical narrative of a relationship where the two counterparts are not quite in sync. Each person is trying to communicate with the other but there is a disconnect between the two people. Aesthetically atmospheric, this piece starts with the two instruments in unison, though settling on the pitch through microtonal and timbral alterations. When you think they might finally link, one of the instruments begins to trail off harmonically. The clarinet historically does not use vibrato and the cello has the ability to color its sound with a range of vibration or straight tone. I used the control of vibration in the piece so that when there is stability in the sound from one of the instruments, the other alters its sound through vibration or microtonal/timbral trills. As a listener, the piece should never feel settled as a representation of the broken communication between the partners.

Communication

Stephen Carroll, tenor
Chelsea Whitaker, piano

Trinkets
III. The Notes I've Passed to You
Candied apples in cellophane
like handprints on a window
pencil stubs
tomato plants in fall:
a list of things we’ve shined out.
Did the grown-ups we loved
feel like we do now?
The notes I’ve passed to you
have been touched and folded
through enough seasons to feel like
blankets
then static
then snow,
which we’ll try to save, too.

Program Notes
I’d been thinking about the potency of nostalgia when I wrote “Trinkets.” The tone of the first poem surprised me, actually, when I read it over; it felt hopeful, self-assured. And so I wrote the second and third poems with a mind to dropping off, a descent into loss and undoing made all the more heartbreaking because in the first poem, it really seems like everything will be okay. I think these seismic shifts happen a lot in our lives. The imagery speaks to that, too: familiar, well-used but a little weird, a little discomfiting. Bees are cats, peach pits are moons. It’s late summer, and everything is just shedding its best. “Trinkets” is about wearing out a favorite sweater, or blinking into being grown-up and awake in a room you’ve never seen.

Trinkets: III. The Notes I've Passed to You (CSI)

​​​​​​Avid vocal composer, Matthew Recio recently finished his post as Vanguard emerging opera composer with Chicago Opera Theatre. During his residency he developed operas with librettists Royce Vavrek (2021) and Stephanie Fleischmann (2020). The concert presentation of his work with Royce, “The Puppy Episode” was premiered in March of 2021 through the Chicago Opera Theater and is pleased to work on a co-production with Opera Columbus and Oberlin Conservatory for the staged premiere. While at Oberlin he worked with the composition and poetry students as well as gave a lecture entitled “When Words Meet Music: The Collaborative Process”. He is a resident artist with the West Edge Opera Aperture Program developing his new opera with Stephanie Fleischmann, L’autre Moi. This May he looks forward to his Carnegie Hall debut with the MYO choir, performing his newest choral work, Bone Cathedral (poetry by Jenna Lanzaro). Most recently, he collaborated with Chicago based choir Stare at the Sun on an immersive choral cantata, The Hollow, performed at the Linne Woods forest preserve that explores themes of isolation, depression, emergence and renewal with a libretti by Alejandra Villareal Martinez. This past Spring he was thrilled to present Touch the Water with the Chicago Fringe Opera Series “A City of Works” that featured text by Chicago based writer Anna Gatdula. This collaboration was written for Chicago based artists Keanon Kyles and David Sands. As a performer/composer his collaboration on How We Hush (poetry by Jenna Lanzaro) with tenor Michael Day earned him a winning prize with Fourth Coast Ensemble’s 2021 Chicago SongSlam. He looks forward to a new collaboration with Chicago based librettist Jerre Dye on a new song that will be produced on a new album, 40x40  by Grammy nominated soprano, Laura Strickling, featuring the work of 40 different leading composers of the art song genre. This Fall he will be collaborating on a unique project by Queer In(n) to create a vocal work inspired by the life of trans Chicago icon Mama Gloria. This will feature an adaptive libretto by Dr. Marquese Carter and featuring the talents of upcoming trans singer Jalissa Spell. In addition to his work with COT and West Edge Opera he was selected as the first commissioned composer for the Cincinnati Song Initiative 2018-2019 season. He is a published artist under the Dale Warland Series and the Craig Hella Johnson Series under G. Schirmer/Hal Leonard. As the 2018 Georgina Joshi vocal prize commission winner, Recio received a premiere of his work “In the Desert” for mezzo-soprano and sinfonietta with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble. Recio was recently named the 2017 American Prize winner in choral composition and was a featured composer with Beth Morrison Projects as an operatic composer at the National Sawdust theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The New Voices Opera Company commissioned him for his one-act opera, “In Memoriam” in 2017 (Libretto: Molly Korroch). Recio is a humble winner of the Cincinnati Camerata Competition, two-time winner of the NOTUS Composition Competition, finalist in the Young New Yorker’s Choral Competition, and a finalist in the Morton Gould Awards and BMI Awards. William Stowman's CD, A Timeless Place (Klavier Records Label) features Recio's song cycle Chronology of Storms, with poetry written by Jenna Lanzaro.

Matthew Recio

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