May This Day Choral Collection

These pieces began with a series of poems by Lawrence Schug that have stayed with me for many years. In their simple language and open-hearted directness, I hear something like a blessing: a way of setting an intention for the day, and sometimes a way of leaving the day with a quiet benediction.

Composer's Note: May This Day Collection

When I set these poems, I try to begin by listening rather than planning. I speak the words aloud. I live with them. I memorize them, carry them through ordinary moments, and let their images and meanings gradually work their way into my ear. At some point, patterns of pitch and rhythm arrive on their own, as if the poem is already singing and I am simply writing down what I am hearing.

As you listen, I invite you to notice how the music lingers on certain phrases, returns to a thought, or reshapes a line through repetition. These choices are not meant to decorate the text, but to dwell with it, to let the choir breathe the words until they feel shared and present. You may also hear a choral language that sits a little to the side of convention. My musical path did not begin in the choral world, and I am grateful that this has allowed me to approach these poems with fresh instincts, while still keeping the writing singable and grounded in the voice.

Musical Qualities

The collection includes both a cappella and accompanied works. I have not tried to “engineer” contrast or cohesion from one piece to the next. The unity comes from Schug’s voice itself, and from the central invitation of the title: May this day… Each piece offers a different way of asking that question, and a different way of listening for what it might mean.

These works are intentionally concise. They can open a concert, begin the second half after intermission, or close an evening with a sense of completion. However they are programmed, my hope is simple: that singers and listeners might feel the poems do what blessings often do, which is to help us imagine, for a moment, a kinder and more intentional way to move through the day.

May This Day Announce Itself

In May This Day Announce Itself, I think of the poem as an invocation: a proclamation that the day might begin with a kind of radiance. Lawrence Schug gives us just a handful of words, but they feel expansive to me, full of gold and lift — “gilded trumpets,” “aurous light,” and “the wings of white swans rising in flight.”
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May This Day Be Your Story

In May This Day Be Your Story, I hear a kind of intimate blessing: that someone’s life might be well told and well heard, received with attention “big as rhubarb leaves.” When I think about the feeling of this poem, I cannot help but think of the relationships in my own life where listening is more than a technique we apply; it happens naturally because the bond is already strong. It is the quiet joy of being captivated by another person.
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May This Day Be No One Following You

In May This Day Be No One Following You, I found myself writing in the shadow of the world around me. I began the piece before ICE invaded Minneapolis. That timing deepened my empathy for people who move through the world without the everyday safety that white males take for granted.
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May This Day Stretch Before You

In May This Day Stretch Before You, I was drawn to the poem’s quiet polarity: the sweetness of time that opens wide before us, and the steady pull of practicality that insists we keep moving. I tried to let the music live in that contrast.
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May This Day Be Wizardry

In May This Day Be Wizardry, I was captivated first by the sound of the words themselves. For me, the poem has a natural rise and fall, and I let that shape the melodic contour, as though the text were already moving like a roller coaster. At its heart, the poem offers a gentle, bracing reminder: if we want magic in our lives, it begins with what we choose to bring to the day ourselves.
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