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Unfinished List of the Things I Love

​Duration: 9'30"

 


Instrumentation:
Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
 


Program Notes:

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

 

– William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

 

The poems used here in these five songs for mezzo-soprano and piano were written especially for use in this song cycle. I became close friends with Jennifer Weiman and Jordan Voth, a husband and wife pair of musicians, while Jordan and I were in graduate school together. The poet, Daniel Weller, is a friend of theirs from their undergraduate studies, and therefore this piece truly is a collaboration amongst friends.

 

The five poems are unified in their evocative imagery that depicts various facets of love.

I. Unfinished

Unfinished list

Of the things

I love most:

White apple

Of the moon,

Fresh mint

And fish.

II. Love

Glaciers, shells, pine needles.

Like the shadow

Of a feather

Flying through the earth

You land in my hands:

A pale, luminous leaf.

III. Untitled

Your voice—

Raw honey

As it filters

Like a golden flame

Through dawn.

Sound that surrounds me

When the rest of the world runs empty.

Raspy, succulent, as deep

As the neck of a flower.

​

IV. Autumn Sonnet

I ask little of light, soil, the night sky.

That each is a kind of compass—that’s fine.

That each leads me to you—a miracle.

I do not need much: just this life, to die

Having loved insatiably, against my

Nature, having given everything up

And having never lost a thing, to fill

My life and your life simply, like a cup.

The air—still wandering in its old age—

Will be plenty to guide me when I must

Leave the globe of the body and return

Like a calm star to my cradle of dust:

For it is where our love was born, first leaf

In the light, when there was no pain, no grief.

 

V. Even the Little Things

Even the little things

I was sure would linger

Have passed—submerging

Themselves in the crisp

Flower of time…

So many drops

Of dew.

Jenkins_Unfinished List.jpg
Perusal Score

Commissioned by the Music Teachers National Association & the Missouri Music Teachers Association, 2016.

Awards:

Selected Score, 2023 Gregory Wiest Call for Scores "What Will Be"

Selected Performance, 2023 Society of Composers, Inc. Online National Conference

Selected Performance, 2023 New Music on the Bayou Festival

Semi-Finalist, The American Prize 2019 Composition - Vocal Chamber Music (Professional Division) Category

Selected Performance, 2019 Society of Composers, Inc. Region VI Conference

Selected Performance, 2018 University of South Florida New-Music Festival and Symposium

Selected Performance, 2017 Emerging Midwestern Collegiate Composers (EMCC) Conference

 

 

Performances:

Gregory Wiest and Areum Oh - 13 July 2024; Munich, Germany

Bethania Baray-Harrison and Emily Trapp Jenkins - 26 February 2024; Jonesboro, AR

Madeleine LaFollette and Michael McAndrew - 3 June 2023; Online [Video of Performance on YouTube]

Claire Vangelisti and Richard Seiler - 31 May 2023; Ruston, LA

Melissa Rodriguez, Michaella Prussak, and Laura Maxwell - 11 April 2019; Commerce, TX

Marika Kyriakos and Emily Trapp Jenkins - 26 February 2019; Jonesboro, AR

Songeaters - 6 April 2018; Tampa, FL 

Jennifer Weiman and Jordan Voth - 10 March 2017; Kansas City, MO

Jennifer Weiman and Jordan Voth - 5 November 2016; Springfield, MO [Video of Performance on YouTube]

 
 
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