Compositions

These pieces began with a series of poems by Lawrence Schug that have stayed with me for many years. 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.