Unison (opt. descant) and Piano

Program Note:

” The Sunny Blue Places” takes flight in a lively, soaring musical line that mirrors the motion of a bird in the wind; darting, swooping, and gliding with effortless joy. The text invites singers and listeners alike to “wing with the wind”: to move with life’s currents, to stay open and curious, and to embrace the exhilaration of new directions. Full of rhythmic energy and bright harmonies, this piece is an uplifting anthem to the freedom and wonder of simply going where the journey leads. An optional descant part offers adventurous singers the chance to rise above the main texture, echoing and transforming its motifs. With its playful twists and melodic turns,”The Sunny Blue Places” celebrates both the unity of ensemble singing and the thrill of taking flight.

Text: (in the public domain) by Wilfrid Campbell

OUT over the spaces,

The sunny, blue places,

Of water and sky;

Where day on day merges

In nights that reel by;

Through calms and through surges,

Through stormings and lulls,

O, follow,

Follow,

The flight of the gulls.

With wheeling and reeling,

With skimming and stealing,

We wing with the wind,

Out over the heaving

Of grey waters, leaving

The lands far behind,

And dipping ships’ hulls.

O, follow,

Follow,

The flight of the gulls.

2 part and piano

Program note:

” Bright the Heart” is a work for two-part voices and piano. The music alternates between lyrical, flowing melodies and quicker, more fragmented gestures. This musical contrast reflects the poem’s themes of light and darkness, and of being lost and then found. Ultimately, the work serves as an anthem to the importance of friendship, and a reminder of our calling to input love and beauty into the world.

Text by Elaine Eastman (1 863-1 953) in public domain:

Dark the day but bright the heart,

True, true friends can never part,

Cold the storm and dark the day,

We can love, and love alway.

Tho’ the winds should moan and cry,

Tho’ they wearily should sigh,

Love can shed a gladsome ray,

We can love, and love alway.

Then, when Springtime’s happy bloom

Sheds about a rich perfume,

Love’s sweet harvest ours that day,

We will love, and love alway.

SATB and Piano

When to-night, the shining snow

Fell on forest brown and lea,

Hanging diamonds on the tree;—

When the dazzling world below

Lifted up, all brilliantly,

Stars again, to stars to throw;—

Then I thought of thee . . . !

White the winter forests sweep

Down to meet the midnight sea,

Dearest, break thy charmèd sleep,

Dream a winter dream of me.

—Marie Louise Van Vorst (1 867–1 936) in p ublic domain

Program note:

“A Winter Dream” is an accessible work for mixed chorus and piano. The piano introduces an ostinato figure

that serves as a metaphor for cyclical processes, both the turning of the seasons and the recurrence of dreams

each night. While the arpeggiated pattern undergoes subtle variation over time, its pitch content remains

largely fixed, reinforcing a sense of continuity and stasis. The work opens with a unison statement of the

principal melody, which is subsequently passed among the voice parts. Although the melody itself remains

constant, its presentation continually evolves: textures shift, different voices assume prominence, and choral

pairings are reconfigured. This treatment mirrors the nature of winter: an enduring presence that nonetheless

appears in ever-changing forms. Alternatively, the music may suggest that winter itself is constant, while it is

we, as humans, who change in our experience of it.

SA(A) and Piano

“Where Love is Life” f rom Three Songs by Duncan Campbell Scott (in the public domain)

Where love is life

The roses blow,

Though winds be rude

And cold the snow,

The roses climb

Serenely slow,

They nod in rhyme

We know – we know

Where love is life

The roses blow.

Where life is love

The roses blow,

Though care be quick

And sorrows grow,

Their roots are twined

With rose-roots so

That rosebuds find

A way to show

Where life is love

The roses blow.

This song is effortless, immediate, and accessible, evoking the possibility of love,

compassion, and blossoming friendship. Love in the poem is not defined as romantic or

platonic; it remains unnamed. Love takes many forms, and so too do the musical phrases,

with their shifting meter and contour, which seek to capture the fleetingness, sensitivity, and

occasional unpredictability with which love enters our lives. I wrote the work during the

week between Christmas and New Year’s, as significant snowfall blanketed Waterloo,

Ontario—a calm and peaceful embrace as I composed, imagining what might be growing

unseen beneath the snow.

SAB and Piano

The Light of Stars is an SAB accompanied work on an Advent theme.

Each section presents the melody in their respective sections. The melody first emerges in the

Soprano, it is then passed to the Alto, and eventually makes its way to the Baritone line. The work

ends in unison. The varying harmonic areas reflect the moods and imagery of the text: the shining,

guiding stars, the wandering and searching, and finally, the enlightened pathway leading us to

here.

Isabel Mackay, 1 875-1 928.

“Gratitude” Published: Toronto:W. Briggs, 1 904, in the public domain

For long the light of stars had been my guide through deepest night,

So placid did they shine, so high in heav’n, so safe, so bright.

Then tell a night when heav’n had lost its stars, or I my sight;

I wandered, missed the way—in all the world there was no light.

Then came the light of your most steadfast eyes, so true, so clear;

They were the stars which set anew my course and brought me here

SAB, Assembly, and Piano

“Hymn for Christmas” by Felicia Hemans (in the public domain)

Adapted by the composer

O lovely voices of the sky,

Which hymned the Saviour’s birth,

O voices of the sky.

O clear and shining light, whose beams

Heaven’s glory shed

Around the palms, and o’er the streams,

Be near, through life and death,

Of hope, and joy, and faith –

O clear and shining light!

O star which led to Him whose love

Brought down man’s ransom free,

May we still gaze on thee?

Thy rays earth man not dim;

Send them to guide us yet,

O star which led to Him!

SATB a cappella

Text by Robert Chilton

TO ———

Softly fades the golden sunlight

From the valley and the hill;

Softly dies the wind of Summer—

All the leaves are still;

And the dusky twilight, floating

From the sunset’s purple bars,

Sows the boundless field of heaven

Thick with golden stars.

Thus, whene’er I leave thee, dearest,

Fades from me the joyous light

That, when in thy charmed presence,

Makes my soul so bright.

Thus, too, mem’ry, like the twilight,

Brings a holy calm to me,

Sowing o’er my spirit’s darkness

Star-bright thoughts of thee.

Poem by Robert Chilton (1 861 -1 947)

n.b.

” holy” was changed to ” f ully” by the comp oser

“Softly Fades the Golden Sunlight” is a meditation on light, and how love persists through

absence. The poem acknowledges loss of immediate presence (sunset), but finds solace in

memory (twilight), and also plants sustaining points of light (stars/thoughts).The final image

leaves us not in darkness, but in a sky quietly filled with constellations; suggesting that love,

once experienced, permanently alters our landscape.

C

ommissioned by Maureen Clark and Stewart Cruikshank for Cantabile Chamber

Singers, Cheryll Chung, Artistic Director, in celebration of their 20th season May 2026

SATB a cappella

2 min duration

Text Marion Moodie

email for score , currently unpublished

A Prairie Flower Song by Marion Moodie (1 867-1 958) pub. 1 934

Come away, come away, where the winds are blowing

All among the grassy hills ‘neath the sky so blue,

Come away, come away, prairie flowers are growing,

May-time blossoms sweet and fair waiting there for you.

Come away, come away, summer days are flying,

Follow on her flowery trail by the sunflower’s gleam,

Come away, come away, gentians blue are vying

With the purple aster stars where the foot-hills dream

The writing process of this work was informed by my month long study with the late Alice Parker at her

writing retreat in Hawley MA. There, she taught us how to listen, and to compose away from the page. To

think of a melody, to use call and response, imitation, and other musical gestures that work contrapuntally.

This work was written away from the piano.

The music is virtuosic in its use of mixed meter. The rhythms and melodies are a slight tongue-twister, an

illumination metaphorically of the text which speaks of flowers flying and growing, swirling in the breeze,

further reminding us of the fleetingness of beauty and life itself.

This work is also inspired by Britten’s “Ballad of Green Broom” from Five Flower Songs, and Pärt’s

“Bogoróditse Djévo”

Keep the 8th note pulse consistent throughout the 

for Wind Orchestra, Commissioned by Wilfrid Laurier University (Dr. McGray, director), level 4

6 min duration, premiered April 2025 by WLU Wind Orchestra, Waterloo

Program Note:

Riverbend is a work inspired on the notions of noticing, of looking, and of listening. The composition is about finding beauty in the banal and the mundane; the seeking something remarkable in the perhaps, unremarkable. Riverbend is further rooted in inspirations of the hyperlocal: cartographic, geographic, and cite specific influences that then ripple into larger connections and conversations about place, and our collective and shared coexistence with it, and to each other.

Riverbend takes its title from a winding service road in Kitchener, Ontario. The road is located on the shared traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. This land is part of the Dish with One Spoon Treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe peoples and symbolizes the agreement to share, protect our resources and not to engage in conflict. Riverbend Drive mirrors the path of the Grand River on one side, and a major highway on the other. Driving on Riverbend Drive forces those who travel it to confront humans impact on the land as the road is dotted with waste disposal yards, parking lots, commercial, and residential buildings, and to put in our gaze the relationship between the natural and constructed environment.

The tension of the above influences is woven into the musical material through the inclusion of many added note sonorities which obfuscate the harmony, depending on the music is balanced and brought to life, the music can shift as if it were sunlight poking through to the forest floor, or how the clouds change shape and hue as we look up to them through the forest foliage. Further embedded into the musical material is a cite-specific influence of the Kitchener pedestrian crossing auditory signals, the tones: so-mi-re-do which signify the correct time to cross a street; as a newly settled resident to the area, I am shaped by the sights and sounds that I am confronted with daily. The topography of the land directly inspired musical shapes, phrase lengths, melodic contours, and the sometimes fragmented gestures which dot the musical landscape. Cadential gestures act like sign posts which point towards where we expect to go, only to surprise us in the final phrase which meanders in a new harmonic area as we notice the beauty which is often right in front of our eyes; the cadential gestures and title is a cartographic influence.

Instrumentation list:

2 Flute (1 double piccolo)

2 Oboe

3 Clarinet in B flat

2 Bassoon

2 Alto Saxophone in E flat

1 Tenor Saxophone in B flat

1 Baritone Saxophone in E flat

3 Trumpet in B flat

4 Horn in F

2 Tenor Trombone

1 Bass Trombone

1 Euphonium

1 Tuba

Timpani

3 Percussion

Percuccion 1 : Marimba, Glockenspiel

Percussion 2: Bass Drum, Vibraphone (with bow)

Percussion 3: Suspended Cymbal, Tubular Bells

Transposing Score

Duration: 6 min (aprx)

n.b. Riverbend may be performed without Oboes or Tenor Saxophone

midi mock up, premiere recording forthcoming