Composed by Robert Lowry.  Arr. by Robert Hugh. Recorded live on 4/11/2014 at Meng Hall, Calif. State Univ. Fullerton.  Brass accompaniment arranged by Drew Ninmer.

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Huge thanks to my brother Drew, Taylor Covey, and everyone else who played on this piece and made this awesome recording possible!

Flying Colors

I was inspired by my good friend, Jim Nova, to do some multitrack recording over the past year.  This is the first track I decided to do, as I always enjoy hearing new takes on Christmas music that I've had the chance to play.  This setting of Still, Still, Still is my "winterization" of what I think is a beautiful piece that portrays the peace, solitude, and soulful harmony of the Christmas season.  

Still, Still, Still

"Sylvan Spirits" is a piece for orchestra and narrator.  The text of the piece consists of three poems, Anne Brontë's "Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day", Rudyard Kipling's "The Way Through the Woods", and Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".


Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves, beneath them, are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!




The Way Through the Woods
by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods....
But there is no road through the woods.




Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Sylvan Spirits

Scott Ninmer

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