Spring Sing Program Guide
Overview
Each selection on this program tells a story. Some reflect moments of joy, hope, and celebration, while others explore reflection, longing, and the shared experiences that connect us all. To help you engage more deeply with the music, we have provided brief notes on each piece, highlighting its themes, meaning, and background. Whether you're hearing these works for the first time or revisiting familiar favorites, we invite you to explore the stories behind the songs.
Let the Music Fill Your Soul
Jacob Narverud
When putting together a concert about renewal and rediscovery, I could think of no better way to begin than with Let the Music Fill Your Soul. Right from the first notes, the piece captures the excitement and joy that comes from making music together.
Unlike many of the pieces on this program, there isn't really a story being told here. Instead, the piece is a celebration of singing itself. It reminds us why we come together as a chorus in the first place: to share something larger than ourselves and to create something that none of us could create alone.
With so many new members joining us this season, this piece felt especially fitting. It reflects the energy of a group finding its sound again, strengthened by new voices while remaining rooted in the friendships and experiences that brought us here.
When the Earth Stands Still
Don Macdonald
One of the things I love most about this piece is the sense of calm that it creates. In a world that often seems to move faster every year, When the Earth Stands Still gives us permission to slow down for a few moments and simply observe the world around us.
As I listen to the piece, I find myself thinking of those quiet moments that are easy to overlook: watching clouds drift overhead, listening to rain against a window, or sitting outside on a summer evening as the day comes to an end. The music doesn't demand attention so much as invite reflection.
For a concert centered on new beginnings, this piece serves as an important reminder that growth doesn't always happen in moments of excitement and change. Sometimes it happens when we stop long enough to notice what has been there all along.
TāReKiTa
Reena Esmail
TaReKiTa is an intriguing example of how rhythm itself can become the central language of a choral work. Built entirely from vocalized syllables rather than traditional text, the piece draws on the sound world of Indian percussion in a way that I, as a director and teacher, have never experienced and was excited to dive into. It transforms rhythmic patterns into something both energetic and deeply musical.
The work originated as a collaborative project with the Urban Voices Project, a Los Angeles-based choir of singers with lived experience of homelessness. In that setting, Esmail introduced elements of Indian rhythmic vocalization, known as bols, syllables used to represent percussion patterns, and the piece developed organically through that shared learning process, eventually becoming a fully realized composition shaped by the ensemble’s participation.
In performance, TaReKiTa also incorporates physical gesture: the hand-sign system Esmail teaches as a way of embodying rhythm and reinforcing precision. These conducting-like motions reflect traditional approaches in Indian classical music, where rhythm is learned not only through sound but through movement and visual cueing.
The piece blends Western choral textures with rhythmic structures inspired by North Indian classical tradition, particularly the energetic patterns associated with tabla drum performance. The repeated syllables function as rhythmic instruments in their own right, generating momentum, clarity, and drive without the need for traditional lyrical text.
Good Night, Dear Heart
Dan Forrest
The composer explains this work far better than I ever could. His words are printed here with permission.
“A few years ago, my brother and his wife found out that the four month old girl that they were soon to adopt from Ethiopia had fallen ill and passed away. They had been making plans for her, staring endlessly at her picture, and loving her from across the ocean, so the news was devastating. God’s plans were not for her to ever see the people who had loved her from halfway around the world, but for her to be taken instead to His loving arms.
For me, life circumstances (whether euphoric or tragic) don’t usually translate into musical inspiration; the two typically remain separate. The night they received this news, though, I found myself longing to pour out a musical elegy. My search for a suitable text led me to a picture from a cemetery in my hometown (Elmira, NY), where the great American author Mark Twain and his family are buried.
My brother and I, from our youth, have known the poem that Twain placed on the tombstone of his beloved daughter Susy, when she died unexpectedly at age 24 and left him heartbroken. I was stunned by the bittersweet irony of this text being from our hometown, and in honor of a beloved daughter who died unexpectedly. I wrote this setting that night; it was quickly added to an upcoming concert and premiered only one week later, as an elegy for Etsegenet and a reminder of the orphans of Ethiopia.” - Dan Forrest
Sail On!
Jeff Trenchard (Debut Piece)
When commissioning a work, I consider texts that I feel are genuinely representative of our group as a whole. You can read more about that under the song I Hear America Singing but for Sail On! I have asked composer and member Jeff Trenchard to tell you a little about the piece.
“The Republic by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a short poem that uses the image of a ship at sea as an allegory for the United States.
Longfellow penned the poem in 1849, during a time of revolution in Europe and rising political tension at home. Against this backdrop of unrest and uncertainty, The Republic offers steady reassurance, urging trust in the nation’s underlying strength and stability, even when it feels as though it is being shaken by turmoil.
This setting, while featuring a piano motif that suggests the crashing of waves against a seafaring vessel, seeks to capture the themes of endurance, conviction, and collective purpose embedded in Longfellow’s timely plea” – Jeff Trenchard
Baba Yetu
Christopher Tin
There are very few choral works from the last twenty years that have reached as many people as Baba Yetu. Many audience members will recognize it as the theme from the video game “Civilization IV”, where it became the first piece written for a video game to win a Grammy Award.
What makes the piece so remarkable, however, is it’s transition from video game to concert hall. Set to the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, the music combines powerful rhythms, soaring melodies, and rich choral textures to create something that feels both ancient and completely modern.
I have always loved the way this piece brings together influences from different musical traditions and cultures. Much like our own ensemble, it demonstrates how unique voices can come together to create something larger than themselves. It is both exciting and uplifting, and though one of the older pieces in the program, it absolutely has a home in a program dedicated to how our sound has continued to grow, expand and develop.
The Dawn's Awake
Laura Farnell
Laura Farnell’s The Dawn’s Awake sets a vivid text by Otto Bohanan that portrays the sunrise as a powerful symbol of awakening and renewal. It traces a clear arc from darkness into illumination, describing the sky as it is gradually transformed by light and sound. What begins as a quiet emergence becomes something expansive and celebratory, as nature itself seems to respond to the arrival of morning. Beneath its imagery of sunrise, the poem also carries a deeper sense of emotional renewal, the feeling that something long awaited has finally arrived.
For our faithful audience members, the piece is a familiar one. It has become a favorite of the group and is often performed at our concerts. But, no matter how familiar, with each new voice added, each nuance more developed, the piece served as perfect representation of who we are and what we continue to become for the Sounds of a New Dawn concert.
The Runner
Joshua Rist
Joshua Rist’s The Runner sets a text by poet and professor Roger Weaver. The poem explores the experience of physical motion as something more than exertion, it becomes a pathway into heightened awareness, where body, environment, and perception feel fully connected.
At its center is a sense of presence that emerges through movement: the awareness of breath, rhythm, and sensation in the natural world. The runner’s experience is portrayed not simply as physical activity, but as a moment of clarity and aliveness in which thought gives way to immediacy and direct experience.
Rist explains that this idea aligns closely with what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as “flow”, a state of complete absorption in an activity where focus, enjoyment, and action become unified. In such moments, time feels altered, self-consciousness recedes, and attention is fully anchored in the present task. As it develops, the piece invites performers and listeners into a shared sense of energy and focus, where sound and motion feel inseparable.
Weaving
Kahan Taraporevala
Weaving reminds us that we do not become who we are all at once; rather, we are shaped gradually through experiences, relationships, and moments that often feel small at the time.
The text reflects this idea, reminding us to remain curious, hopeful, and open to growth. It is a message that feels especially fitting for a concert centered on renewal.
What stands out most in Taraporevala’s setting is how the music itself seems to weave. Voices enter, overlap, and intertwine, forming a texture that is constantly evolving. Individual lines combine to create something richer than any single voice could achieve alone.
As a chorus, we understand this deeply. We are the result of shared experiences, performances, challenges, and triumphs. Each singer contributes a thread, and together those threads are woven into something stronger and more beautiful than any one voice on its own.
The Awakening
Joseph M. Martin
The Awakening is the oldest piece in our concert today, at just over 30 years old. Thought we wanted to keep the pieces relatively recent, it has been selected for the beautiful story of rebirth that it tells. Much like Good Night, Dear Heart, the story behind this piece is profound and impactful and the only way to truly understand it’s beauty is to read about it I in the composers own words. Please click on the link below to go to the composer’s page.
https://www.martin88.com/plm/pdfs/A2023_The_Story_Behind_the_Song.pdf
These Things Shall Never Die
Mark Burrows
Mark Burrows’ These Things Shall Never Die sets a well-known text by Charles Dickens that reflects on the lasting presence of beauty, truth, and goodness in human life. It reminds us that the things we give, love, hope, compassion, don’t end when the moment passes, but continue on in ways we often don’t see.
Burrows’ setting carries that idea with a calm, steady build, gradually growing in sound and intensity until it reaches a full, confident close.
As we close this concert centered around the Sounds of a New Dawn the piece feels like a reminder that what we are building isn’t separate from what came before us. It’s part of something longer, and still unfolding.
I Hear America America Singing
Lon Beery
Dr. Beery’s work is the first one that I ever commissioned for the group. Lon is an incredible Rochester based composer whose work I had come across and admired on many occasions. When the group first began to rebrand as the Lock City Sound I reached out and asked if he would be interested in composing a piece to reflect both who we were, and who we would become. In thinking of suitable texts, the one which immediately come to mind was Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”.
Written in 1860, the poem celebrates the voices of ordinary people and the dignity found in daily work. The poem imagines America as a great chorus in which each individual contributes a unique song, creating a collective expression that is richer and more powerful than any single voice alone. Whitman moves through a variety of workers and trades, portraying each as a vital part of the nation’s character. By honoring both individuality and community, he presents a vision of a society strengthened by the diversity of its people and their contributions.
As a group that comes together from such a diverse array of backgrounds, I could think of no more fitting text to describe who we are.
When I first heard the work, I could immediately envision the early American landscape, zooming in to vignettes of daily life until finally joining together to sing their “robust, friendly… strong melodious song.”
This piece has become a mainstay of our shows and a representation of who we are and who will continue to be as a chorus.
Omnia Sol
Z. Randall Stroope
Z. Randall Stroope’s Omnia Sol reflects on the connections we form throughout our lives, and how those moments continue to shape us even as time moves forward. It suggests that every encounter leaves something behind, and that we carry those impressions with us in ways both seen and unseen.
As I thought of pieces our two groups could combine to perform there is something poetic about a piece that moves with long, flowing lines and a steady sense of motion, and combines Latin and English. It gives a broad, timeless quality that feels larger than any one moment or group.
As we bring together both ensembles, we join generations of voices in one shared moment. In that sense, it feels less like an ending and more like an opening. We are thankful the Lockport students have joined us today as we embarked on what will hopefully be, for both of us, the Sounds of a New Dawn.
