Vulture
Special excerpt from my performance at Old South Church, Gordon Chapel, Boston, MA.
Last Saturday evening I had the pleasure to perform “Birth-Dues” for an intimate audience in the Gordon Chapel at the historic Old South Church on Boylston Street across from the Boston Public Library and diagonal from Trinity Church Boston (in Copley Square) where I used to sing as a member of the Schola Choir. In “Birth-Dues” I adapt fourteen poems by the poet Robinson Jeffers to music I authored. The audio excerpt above is a song from the cycle which adapts Jeffers’s poem “Vulture.” For this performance I was accompanied on Bassoon by my dear friend Benjamin Phillip Stern. I struggled to compose music to this poem while I was a Fellow at the Tor House Foundation in Winter 2023. However, an inspiring encounter in Kenya with Vultures (which I will elaborate on in a future essay) supplied me with the vital reserves to compose music for this poem within a matter of days. This is the first time I performed this piece in Boston. I recommend you use headphones to listen but it is not necessary. Please enjoy "Vulture." I hope one day I may perform for you live!
Correction: In this recording I made the mistake of singing “I lay death-still and watched the flight-feathers” when I should have sang “I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers.” Also I sang the “But” too softly before “But how beautiful he looked” so this word is not discernible. Forgive me! I will be publishing recordings of this poem/song in the future which do not incorporate this mistake.
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