instrumentation soprano and piano

duration 6 minutes

written february 2024

about the piece This piece is inspired by Diepreye's poem "Corner Motel Mercy", a plea from an older sibling to their sister to get their life together. With a father who recently passed and a grieving mother, the older sibling tries to get their younger sibling to snap out of there messy, sad ways and get them back on the right track. This text is a golden shovel poem, meaning the last word on each line forms a previous poem. The inspiration for this poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. In the music, I place an emphasis on each of these words, having the soprano elongate on each of these words in constrast to the fast moving music everywhere else.

about the poet Diepreye is a Nigerian-American poet. She is an MFA student at the University of Michigan and an Assistant Editor for Michigan Quarterly Review. Winner of a 2022 and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Prize, and the second-runner-up in the 2023 American Literary Review Poetry Contest, her poems also appear or are forthcoming in "Epoch," "The Adroit Journal," "Up the Staircase Quarterly," "Rising Phoenix Press," and elsewhere. 

recording Nicole Knorr, soprano; Davis Reinhart, piano