Where Everything Is Music

As this piece was written for Volti's 30 years of singing, I could think of no more appropriate text than Rumi's playful and profound poem Where Everything Is Music. As in much of my choral music, I aim to capture or at least reflect the movement and motion of the text as much as the individual words and phrases. To me, the overwhelming sentiment is that of a headlong rushing, an enthusiasm and spirit that will not be still.

This short work also looks back to the madrigals of the renaissance. Not in surface sound, but in the way phrases of text are painted in the music – not individual word painting, but letting the rise and fall of phrases or the density of sound be suggested by the phrases and subject matter of the poem.

The piece also has inspiration beyond the text, related to Volti's 30th anniversary season. That inspiration comes from all the singers, both past and present, who along with Bob have spurred my own creative journey and taught me so much. Truly, all of their “everything” is music, and I hope this piece reflects the past, present (and future) joys I've experienced in my work with Volti.