Sun – Jay Derderian

Year composed: 2012

Instrumentation: SATB, a cappella

Duration (approx.): 3′

NOTES:

Premiered by the First Presbyterian Chamber Choir on October 5th, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. Greg Homza, conductor and director.

VIDEO:

PROGRAM NOTES:

A few years ago I received a short story from my (then) fiancée for my birthday. She would never admit it herself, but she is a brilliant wordsmith. The lyricism she injected within even the most ordinary passages always suggested to me a warm, intimate music, woven with the same kind of care she took to paint her stories. I’ve read and re-read this short story countless times over the years, and each time every world finds a way to sing into my ear and fill me with warmth and light.

There were too many phrases and images to choose from to set to music, so instead I opted to extract fragments and still images; short phrases that sang to me as I read her beautiful story. The text used in my choral piece Sun are these fragments, and represents my meager attempt at encapsulating the feelings of light her words brought to me.

TEXT

What soft fragments of sun blankets you?
I was born the day I saw that face.

My pitiful self, covered in scars.
It’s as if I were no longer me,
but a petal floating in the wind.

No longer me.

What soft fragments of sun blanket you?
What soft sun blankets you?

– Tri’ah Derderian

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By Jay