This work originally came about as a collaboration between me and singer Elena Paul at the Peabody Institute. I was homesick, having just moved from one coast to the other, and wanted desperately to write music that tied me back to my roots. Having been assigned an art song collaboration, I immediately gravitated to the work of Kim Stafford, an Oregon Poet Laureate whose work I had become familiar with through my partnership with Cascadia Composers. At Klamath Marsh immediately struck me as a poem ripe for music - all sorts of colorful words, a rich inner world, a tragic history, a nature-based theme that took me back to the luscious, cool, damp marshland of the Pacific Northwest. As I studied the poem more in depth, exploring many different ways to set the words and craft the story, I fell deeply in love with the history of a people whose lives and culture were lost - ceded to the United States - but not forgotten, and are now being remembered once again. I feel that I learned something about holding on to the past while writing the piece - treasuring it, feeling the pain of its loss, but also using it as encouragement to boldly look ahead into the unknown. I have never met the Klamath people, but this poem makes me love them all the same, and I hope that this song makes you love them as well.
Performance Recording Here
Duration: 10’ 30”
Range: A3 - A5
This work originally came about as a collaboration between me and singer Elena Paul at the Peabody Institute. I was homesick, having just moved from one coast to the other, and wanted desperately to write music that tied me back to my roots. Having been assigned an art song collaboration, I immediately gravitated to the work of Kim Stafford, an Oregon Poet Laureate whose work I had become familiar with through my partnership with Cascadia Composers. At Klamath Marsh immediately struck me as a poem ripe for music - all sorts of colorful words, a rich inner world, a tragic history, a nature-based theme that took me back to the luscious, cool, damp marshland of the Pacific Northwest. As I studied the poem more in depth, exploring many different ways to set the words and craft the story, I fell deeply in love with the history of a people whose lives and culture were lost - ceded to the United States - but not forgotten, and are now being remembered once again. I feel that I learned something about holding on to the past while writing the piece - treasuring it, feeling the pain of its loss, but also using it as encouragement to boldly look ahead into the unknown. I have never met the Klamath people, but this poem makes me love them all the same, and I hope that this song makes you love them as well.
Performance Recording Here
Duration: 10’ 30”
Range: A3 - A5
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