Interlochen, Michigan
78th Program of the 52nd Year
*
INTERLOCHEN ARTS ACADEMY CHOIR
John Bragle, conductor
Steve Larson, piano
Friday, November 8, 2013
7:30pm, Corson Auditorium
"Emulations"
A note from Creative Writing instructors Mika Perrine and Anne-Marie Oomen:
When John Bragle approached us with the idea of a collaborative performance featuring
original poems by creative writing students alongside the choir’s performance of poems by
American poets set to music, we were inspired by the unique opportunity to fuse music and
poetry. We asked six creative writers to create emulations of the original poems, writing in
response to the central question or impulse at the heart of the original poem, yet finding
ways to make their new poems fresh and original. In some cases the writers borrowed
forms, poetic techniques and musical devices from the original poem, and in other cases
they were more inspired by the author’s imagery and ideas.
Each creative writer will be reading their new poem as a prelude to the choir’s performance
of the original. In this program you will find the original poems followed first by a few words
from each creative writer describing how the original poem influenced their new poem, then
by the new poem itself. We are most grateful to John Bragle and the Interlochen Academy
Choir for inviting creative writers to be a part of this collaboration. We hope you enjoy this
exciting poetic and musical dialogue between past and present that explores the traditions
and innovative possibilities of American poetry.
PROGRAM
“development”
Megan Walters, writer/recitant, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Let down the bars, O Death, Op. 8, No. 2 .................................. Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
“A Litany of Things in Need of Music in A House Devoid of Grandmothers”
Sojourner Ahebee, writer/recitant, Philadelphia, Pa.
I Am in Need of Music ................................................................... David L. Brunner (b. 1953)
“Caroline”
Carly Miller, writer/recitant, Portland, Mich.
Monotone ................................................................................. J. Michael Saunders (b. 1989)
“Invocation of the Heart”
Mickayla Noel, writer/recitant, Alexandria, Va.
Three Whitman Settings from "Leaves of Grass" ............................. René Clausen (b. 1953)
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Jessica Mashburn, soloist, Hartselle, Ala.
Quicksand Years
Mason Boudrye, soloist, Derwood, Md.
The Last Invocation
“note from an infidel”
Zoe Graff, writer/recitant, Lexington, Ky.
The Waking .......................................................................................... David Conte (b. 1955)
“electricity instead”
Molly McDaniel, writer/recitant, Alta, Iowa
when god decided to invent .............................................................. Joshua Shank (b. 1980)
Kameron Sheffield, soprano saxophone, Detroit, Mich.
POEMS AND PROGRAM NOTES
Let down the bars, O Death!
by Emily Dickinson
Part Four: Time and Eternity
LET down the bars, O Death!
The tired flocks come in
Whose bleating ceases to repeat,
Whose wandering is done.
Thine is the stillest night,
Thine the securest fold;
Too near thou art for seeking thee,
Too tender to be told.
development
by Megan Walters
our skin is covered
in photographs.
mementos and camera shutters-our words, these days.
we’ve built a collage
of the way we walk.
we’ve found symmetry
in our polaroid edges.
there are slow
dances in these
faded colors, oh
we are walking
slow, these days;
yes, curling up at our
corners we are.
(hush)
there is not
a word for pre-diagnosis
mourning.
instead we make
of our skin
sepia ribbon.
we must let
the photographs
fall asleep.
we must sing
and we must sing
and we must hum.
When creating a response to Emily Dickinson’s piece, one of the main objectives I focused
on was capturing the slowness and almost relief of death that her poem seemed to
suggest. I decided to write from the point of view of the “flocks” mentioned in her piece, and
also tried to emphasize the idea of finishing, of “wandering” being done. It was both
challenging and a pleasure to work off such a beautiful piece.
~Program notes by Megan Walters
I Am in Need of Music
by Elizabeth Bishop
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
A Litany of Things in Need of Music in A House Devoid of Grandmothers
by Sojourner Ahebee
This Magnolia with wasted winter breath,
This dinner table weighted with flowers,
This grandson who eats his television hours,
This mother who consumes her mother's death,
This green window plant needing the sun's breath,
This living room ceiling scanned by dead eyes,
This languished insulin in a fridge that sighs,
This quite psalm, this hunger, this theft, this loss.
This fright: the first thing I noticed were the cats.
When she was dying in a living room
their bodies hid behind the grandfather clock,
trying to take in the time.
This theft: While her insides erupted from her mouth
The cats were right about everything: they knew of this thievery
Before it was taken.
After all, they'd lived 8 lives already.
This quiet Psalm: When she could no longer say the lines,
pronounce the poetry,
the cats fled from home,
surviving only on the city's wild flowers
and the gas oil from the underbellies of cars: This dispossession.
They didn't return until the soil consumed her.
Holy. Holy. Holy.
This winter breath upon Magnolias,
This lily, this rose, this lavender that stains the dinner table
with dead petals,
The hours a grandson has learned to count through television,
A mother's death that gorges upon daughters,
Oh this consumption, this consuming, this devouring is in need of music,
the quiet kind:
a grandmother's hushed radio at dawn.
I was really intrigued by Bishop’s use of a broken sonnet, and the narrative distance she
utilized in many of her poems, so the first stanza of my emulation tries to capture her voice
with the anaphora of “this,” which creates a certain type of distance from the experience for
the speaker; the rhyme scheme, and the almost uniform syllable use in each line. I also
really loved Bishop’s use of alliteration in the original poem, so I attempted to use
alliteration in my own poem as a means of creating a sense of urgency through sound.
~Program notes by Sojourner Ahebee
Monotone
by Carl Sandburg
Caroline
by Carly Miller
THE MONOTONE of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
The song of the birds lilts.
The sink and swirl
of their sad melody
The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful—
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.
and the form of the girl is precious.
Her pounding, bare feet
slapping the shallows,
moving forward
through sand and
sink-swirl song
towards me.
Pounding bare feet-and you are precious,
and you are mine, sister.
Your long laughter,
the music of
your ongoing dance
with those heavy feet
and your light melody-and your face,
its lilt I know
set apart from
all the warm rains
and fires and skies
and seas.
And it is beautiful,
sister.
When writing my own poem, I wanted to elaborate on the face that is coming towards the
speaker in Sandburg’s poem, and give that face meaning. To do so, I wrote my poem
about my little sister, Caroline. In further imitation of the poem, I used repetition in my
description. I also brought in the warm rain, fire, sky, and sea that we see in the final stanza
of “Monotone.”
~Program notes by Carly Miller
Three Selections from “Leaves of Grass”
by Walt Whitman
I. A Noiseless Patient Spider
A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
II. Quicksand Years
QUICKSAND years that whirl me I know not whither,
Your schemes, politics, fail—lines give way—substances mock and elude me; Only the
theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d Soul, eludes not;
One’s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that out of all is sure;
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life—what at last finally remains?
When shows break up, what but One’s-Self is sure?
III. The Last Invocation
AT the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set open the doors O soul.
Tenderly—be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love).
Invocation of the Heart
by Mickayla Noel
My body is only a glorified shell,
knitted and locked with tethers and tissue,
liquid and bones.
Painted lavishly with soft strokes—You, are my greatest distraction,
beating as if life has its own rhythm, maybe it does,
a ticking time bomb,
and only knowing emotion’s eighth notes.
Do not let yourself be ripped from me—Or stopped by me,
for thoughts are only fleeting whims,
politics fleeting interests,
led by green devils,
You are your own leader; a host inside this glorified shell,
my body, my body—that allows you to conduct your symphonies,
Your symphony, your symphony,
Filled with beats,
And pauses.
I will be patient,
I must learn to follow what you conduct,
and when I do,
you will sigh with conviction,
end with a soft tap,
last thrums of the melody falling into darkness.
Walt Whitman’s “Quicksand Years” and “The Last Invocation” inspired me in many ways.
These two poems really opened my eyes to not only the world but to how Whitman wrote
and the way he thought about things. He only put what was needed in his lines to get the
point across. He used simple imagery and common words but he used them in ways that
were astonishing. “Quicksand Years” is subtly angry in the way he talks about politics, and
“The Last Invocation” really brings a sense of peace because it reminds you of the
quietness of mass and how the body is an important thing. In “Invocation of the Heart,” I
tried to incorporate his ideas and sentence structure as well as write my own
meaning/response.
~Program notes by Mickayla Noel
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
note from an infidel
by Zoe Graff
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
monday makes me want to lie
down in white-sheeted beds,
to run fingers over thighs,
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
and quiet the birdish cry
of the sun’s kindling head.
monday makes me want to lie
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
and curl in the wake of sunlight
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, dripping from my window ledge-And learn by going where I have to go.
to run fingers over thighs
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
and pretend it’s night.
you are reading the unsaid.
monday makes me lie
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
to you. i want to die,
to kiss your cheeks indian red,
to run fingers over thighs.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
i want to pull from your mind
what of mine you’ve read.
monday made me want to lie,
to run fingers over another’s thighs.
With “note from an infidel” I wanted to expand on Roethke’s villanelle form as well as the
stagnation of mornings. Everyone knows the Monday morning feeling, and this poem is
meant to give reason to one person’s experience.
~Program notes by Zoe Graff
when god decided to invent
by e. e. cummings
electricity instead
by Molly McDaniel
when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circustent
and everything began
god has a heart of thunderstorms
electricity instead of blood and we
are ringing with the smell of smoke
and heavy grief bent with sunlight
when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because
the bible is a question
to a very long answer but we
are punctuation, interruption—exclamation we
are asking god for explanation
he is playing pool with an old friend at 3 am
to destroy the meaning of time
we are digging up the bodies
to find the questions we buried alive
the dawn is gold as we hang our sorrows
on long laundry lines and this
is when why comes quiet in the rain
and flares lightning on the walls
The style of my piece was greatly influenced by cummings’s original poem, and I strived to
emulate his lack of capitalization, punctuation, and surprising twists/plays on language. I
was also intrigued by the subject matter, especially how it was presented to cummings’s
reader through abstractions as well as the personification of nouns. “when god decided to
invent” had a large thematic influence on my poem. Particularly, the idea that God has had
a “plan” for humans from the moment He created us, the way(s) we as humans react to
such a plan, and our innate compulsion to understand the unanswered questions life
presents us with were the core themes I wanted to explore in “electricity instead.”
~Program notes by Molly McDaniel
*
*
*
INTERLOCHEN ARTS ACADEMY CHOIR
Lyndsay Hunter, manager
Kira Alejandro, Del.
Suzanna Feldkamp, Mich.
Carolyn Anderson, N.Y.
Taylor Fernandez, Mich.
Cheyenne Anderson, Ky.
Zoë Fisher, Mich.
Ryan Apathy, Alaska
R. Stone Fuglaar, Texas
Lucian Avalon, N.M.
Chloe Geller, Pa.
Hannah Ayrault, Mich.
Bryce Genovese, Mich.
Andra Bane, Ohio
Michaela Gleason, N.C.
Madeline Bawden, Iowa
Tevan Goldberg, Ore.
Christopher Bell, Del.
Sara Gougeon, Canada
Kiersten Bell, Ill.
Yiyuan Hao, China
Ivanna-Marie Bermeo, Mich. Harrison Heard, Ohio
Erica Bigelow, Mich.
Peter Howard, Texas
Adrian Binkley, Wis.
Enzo Iannello, Mich.
Joshua Birdsong, Mich.
Molly Janusz, Mich.
Elisabeth Boaz, Mich.
Zackry Chance Jonas-O'Toole,
Mason Boudrye, Md.
Texas
Laura Breibart,
Lauren Jones, Mich.
United Kingdom
Scott Kennedy, Kan.
Lauren Brindise, Tenn.
Allie Kessel, Mich.
Michael Burdick, Fla.
Tarl Knight, Wis.
Elaina Burress, Mich.
Katie Larson, Mich.
Michael Caraher, Calif.
Seong-Hwan Lee, South Korea
Anduo Chen, China
Olivia Lerwick, N.C.
Kurt Clare, Mich.
Blake Lieder, Mich.
Sophie Claytor, Texas
Edward Lim, South Korea
Ruby Collins, N.Y.
Thomas Litchev, Colo.
Andrew Conover, N.J.
Elizabeth Marella, N.H.
Jacob Dassa, Calif.
Jessica Mashburn, Ala.
Marcus Day, Calif.
Jasmine Maslanova Brown, Fla.
Sage Deagro-Ruopp, Mich. Molly McGuire, Wash.
Sierra Denniston, Fla.
Mackenzie Méndez, Calif.
Trevor DeVine, Mich.
Fanyi Meng, China
Jingtong Leah Dou, China Emma Metcalf, Mich.
Madison Douglas, W.Va.
Kathleen Mills, N.C.
Evangeline Edwards, Colo. Liza Moss, Ind.
*
*
*
Cassidy Noonen, Ohio
Ana Paluskievicz, Pa.
Piper-Iman Paul-Stubbs, N.Y.
Mackenzie Payne, Fla.
Nathanael Phillips, Texas
Elizabeth Pohlman, Mich.
Mary Helen Porter, Miss.
Brooke Pratt, Ind.
Cosetta Righi, Ga.
Sydney Robinson, Conn.
Ruth Rodriguez, Texas
Danielle Rogers, Alaska
Ellen Seidell, Mich.
Caroline Shaffer, Del.
Magdalen Sheppard, Mich.
Madeline Silberman, Texas
Karley Smith, Texas
William Socolof, N.Y.
Emily Spradling, Calif.
Marie Staples, Japan
Ava Suppelsa, Ill.
Elizabeth Thornton, Colo.
Jihao Tian, China
Emma Treganowan, Mich.
Rosalia Triana, Texas
Anna Tubbs, Mich.
Gawain Usher, Vt.
Caleb Voisine-Addis, Maine
Hailey Ward, Vt.
Katherine Wiseman, Ill.
Jeh Young Woo, Hong Kong
Clayton Woosley, Ohio
Lingyi Fiona Zhang, China
Yaqi Zhang, China
Zi An Zhou, China
JOHN BRAGLE is the conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy Choir and Chamber
Singers, instructor of voice, and on the choral faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp. He is a
cum laude graduate of Michigan State University with a bachelor degree in music
education and a master’s degree in choral conducting. Previously, he was director of
choirs for Williamston Community Schools, where under his direction the program
increased significantly in size and prominence within the state of Michigan. Mr. Bragle has
also served as visiting professor of music at Northwest Michigan College, director of the
Michigan State University Youth Treble Ensemble, director of the Michigan State University
Men’s Glee Club, director of choirs at St. Thomas Church in East Lansing and musical
director of the Accafellas; an eight member award-winning ensemble based at Michigan
State University. Mr. Bragle maintains an active performing career in concert and recital.
His conducting studies have been with Charles Smith, David Rayl and Jonathan Reed, and
voice studies with Richard Fracker and Robert Bracey.
STEVE LARSON is an accompanist at Interlochen Arts Academy. He has played in recitals
and chamber music festivals throughout the Midwest including the Absolutely Amadeus
Festival in Milwaukee, the Manitou Music Festival and Chamber Music North. Mr. Larson
served as company pianist for the Milwaukee Ballet Company. He has composed music for
several dance productions including Elsa, Milkmaid of Tangier (Milwaukee Ballet School),
Stages, Camille and Song of Flight (Interlochen Dance Ensemble). In 2010, he was named
a semi-finalist in the Dayton Ballet New Music/New Dance competition. His original music
for use in the ballet studio appear on a number of CDs from Brio Recordings
(www.briorecordings.com) and Aquarian Sound. Mr. Larson has appeared on radio
broadcasts of “Live from Studio A” and “A Prairie Home Companion.”
*
*
*
In consideration of the performing artists and other patrons, the use of flash photography is not permitted.
Federal copyright and licensing rules prohibit the use of video cameras and other recording equipment.
In order to provide a safe and healthy school, Interlochen maintains a smoke-free and alcohol-free campus.
Michigan law prohibits any weapons, including concealed weapons, on Interlochen property
because we are an educational campus. Thank you for your cooperation.
www.interlochen.org