Say What You Mean
Say What You Mean is a collection of vocal music. All of the recordings here are performed by KHORIKOS, whose astonishing voices I am grateful for every day.
Canon Triplex and other limitations is a reworking of Benedetto Marcello’s 16th-century musical puzzle. I gradually phase out Marcello’s music and pepper in my own, until the whole thing collapses under the weight of the “rules” of the piece (and of Renaissance polyphony generally.) New music emerges from the wreckage and finds a way to exist on its own terms, without entirely steamrolling the musical language of the past.
It’s easy to feel stuck in a cultural conversation, but completely isolating yourself isn’t an option either. What can you change?
The Language is about how hard it is to say what you mean.
Locate I
love you some-
where in
teeth and
eyes, bite
it but
take care not
to hurt, you
want so
much so
little. Words
say everything.
I
love you
again,
then what
is emptiness
for. To
fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full
of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.
Ghazal gave me permission for gushy romantic gestures that I might not have indulged in if the piece were just me, and not a kind of dialogue with the poet. Michael Rose commissioned the piece, for SATB choir, viola, piano, and soprano duet, as a setting of his mother’s original poetry, in the traditional ghazal form. Love and loss.
Recorded at the fabulous Merkin Hall in NYC, with passionate, virtuosic playing by Catie Longhi, viola, and Andy Roninson, piano.
