Choir

Wild Nights

2025

Text by Emily Dickenson

Commissioned by Quorum Boston

SATB choir

Quorum Boston commissioned me to write a piece for their concert in June 2025. I was leafing through a book of Dickenson poems I own and found this poem. At first I thought "So this is what the movie Wild Nights with Emily was named after." Then I read the poem, saw it as either a proposal or a dream of a date one could have with their lover. The idea of a couple going somewhere beautiful together, being present with each other, no one else to bother them and every worry in the world left behind for the moment, is a common theme in queer poetry. When I read this poem, I imagined Emily and Susan rowing at sea together, they get lost, and then stay put, enjoying a moment of solitude and togetherness. The music immediately materialized in my brain after that.

She Sights a Bird

2024

Text by Emily Dickenson

(text used with permission from Harvard University Press)

Commissioned by Quorum Boston

SATB choir

Purchase the score here!

Quorum Boston commissioned me to write a piece for their concert Birds, Monks and Other Noisy Beasts: a gay olde time on a dark Monday night in January. As soon as I found this poem, I
knew this would be the one to set. What I love most about this poem is the innuendo. On the surface, it’s about a cat catching a bird, and I make it clear with the “meow”s sung
throughout the piece. At the same time, lines like “She chuckles—She flattens—then she crawls” along with “Her eyes increase to Balls” suggest that this poem is a metaphor for sexual attraction. In recent years, we’ve come to learn that Emily Dickinson was a lesbian in a lifelong relationship with her childhood friend, later sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. Since
then, we’ve come to view her more as a messy sapphic and less as a depressed spinster that historians originally made us believe through censorship in Dickinson’s letters. This poem
captures her messy sapphic vibe more than any poem of her’s I read in grade school. I think more folks need to see this side of her.

What is G-d?

Text by Quinn Gutman

Commissioned by Quorum Boston

SATB choir

Premiered: December 10 and 13, 2018 at the Josephine A. Fiorentino Community Center in Allston, MA and the First Church in Cambridge, MA.

Duration 3:30

Purchase the score here!

This work questions G-d’s being, identity, and gender. Why is it that our most common image of G-d is an old white man? Maybe G-d’s a young person? Maybe G-d’s a person of color? Maybe G-d’s female or non-binary? Or maybe G-d isn’t a person at all? To the Hebrew speakers who first wrote the old testament, G-d was no more than a masculine noun. Doesn’t mean G-d’s a person. In fact, does the bible even call G-d a person?

Music, When Soft Voices Die

Text by Percy Bysshe Shelley

SATB choir

Premiered June 28, 2011

Duration: 3:00

Purchase the score here!

Music When Soft Voices Die represents how one hears a voice calling. The closer they get to the voice that is calling, the louder it becomes, and the further away, the softer it becomes. The entire piece is built around one large crescendo and decrescendo. It alternates between two sections. One of the sections is a series of contrapuntal melismas on an “Ah” vowel. The dynamics change dramatically over expressive lines in this section. The other section is the choir singing on text. They sing a bit softer and in more of a chordal fashion. The form of this piece is put together like this: Vocalise, Text, Vocalise, Text, Vocalise