Winged Reflections (2010)
PURCHASE SCORE
Winged Reflections
mezzo-soprano, alto saxophone, piano // ~ 11 minutes
Texts by Lisa DeSiro and Mimi White
Premiere: October 16, 2010, Manchester, NH
Commissioned by NHMTA as 2010 Commissioned Composers
Program Note:
In Winged Reflections, each song focuses on birds in one capacity or another. However, these are not poems about birds themselves; rather, each poem uses the subject of birds as its vehicle toward a larger concept: of childhood, of our own mortality, and of what might have been.
Songs
I. Utterance (4:00)
II. Requiem (3:15)
III. Paradise Point (3:45)
Texts:
I. Utterance
by Lisa DeSiro
Drama in the yard next door —
three blue jays on three
branches of the same tree,
screeching. Each intones
a different pitch. Dissonant
triad. Nerve-wracking.
Why on earth would they make
such a ruckus? Couldn’t be
courting or nesting.
Wrong season. Maybe,
camouflaged, the neighbor’s cat
skulking through the grass?
My cat shows no interest,
glancing at the partway-open sash,
sniffing the entering scents —
mild day, mid-November.
Those jays sound like they know
something I don’t.
Each, upon lift-off,
leaves the tree swaying
and dazzles briefly bright
blue-white across the autumn
drab. In my kitchen, I can't help
but remember...
My mother always enjoyed
telling the story of
my first words, uttered
when a bird flew by: What
that is? A question
spoken looking out, seeing
the unknown through a window.
II. Requiem
by Mimi White
If I had all the time in the world
I would write poems about birds.
Every day I would record their songs,
their birdlike shapes against the creamy fog
and pay no attention to the cough, the bomb,
the black and white silhouette of homes
with or without sun. The bird flies
through memory, in and out of broken windows.
Now and then it balances on a shattered sill
catching its beak and eye, its mortal reflection,
and then the singing, oh the singing.
III. Paradise Point
by Lisa DeSiro
Here, breeze-rustled palm trees make a sound almost like the sound
of brown oak leaves clinging to branches tousled by March
back home where winter lingers.
Here, it’s already spring. Grass greening the ground. Full-blown
blossoming, purple roadside weeds, fuchsia, jacaranda,
jasmine scent all over the island.
Here there are flowers that look like birds, birds that look like flowers.
Even the plainclothes crows strut their stuff with a sunlit flare,
glossy as polished patent leather.
Here, a loon joins me for lunch on the bungalow patio. And seagulls
keep me company at the beach while I stroll, wading,
trousers rolled, holding my shoes.