Night Migrations
Year
2022
Length
9'00"
Category
Choral
Orchestration
SATB Chorus + Flute, Clarinet, Horn, Piano, Strings
Premiere
October 29, 2022
New Hampshire Master Chorale
Dan Perkins, Music Director
Program Note
The relationship between humans and animals has always revolved around worlds unseen. The night migrations of songbirds hold a special place in this pantheon of things we miss. While we sleep, these feathered flyers, the size of tennis balls, cross continents. Traveling under the cover of darkness, their maps are the moon, the stars and the earth’s magnetic fields. Hannah Fries’ evocative poetry contrasts these coexisting scenes: people slumbering down on earth, while avian highways soar above us. A poignant line, “cities curled in grief,” contextualizes her vision in the difficulties of this moment. Hannah shared with me, “I wanted to convey the sense that birds could do this remarkable thing, migrating at night, thousands of miles, despite whatever obstacles we keep throwing at them, despite whatever else is happening in the human world--and that perhaps there is inspiration there, to rise above, answer to something higher, stay focused on what is good and true.”
Text by Hannah Fries
We sleep,
stumbling
through doorless dreams,
while over our rooftops
sky shivers with wings—
warblers, cuckoos,
herons and sparrows—
waves rising
on night’s cool breath.
We sleep
as they follow the stars
(hummingbird and wren)
high over shadowed earth,
trees clinging to rock,
cities curled in grief.
We close our windows,
bury our faces—
we sleep
and they speak:
buzz and whistle,
secret names
through air
tying each to each.
We sleep
as they fly
(imagine being lifted)
by moon and magnet,
over undulating sea
toward a place
(remember)
that echoes
in hallowed clearings,
in hollowed bones,
the song that pulls them
home.
Performance History
- October 30, 2022: New Hampshire Master Chorale & Juventas New Music Ensemble, Colonial Theater, Laconia, NH
- October 29, 2022: New Hampshire Master Chorale & Juventas New Music Ensemble, Granoff Music Center at Tufts University, Medford, MA
