In April 2009, Germán Aguilar attended a recital of my works in Tempe, AZ.  At the time Germán was a masters student in choral conducting at Northern Arizona University, working under Dr. Edith Copley.  He and I didn’t meet at that recital, nor did we meet at a mutual friend’s wedding a few months later.  However, he was nice enough to send me a note telling me how much he enjoyed the recital and that he was working with a bang-up men’s chorus at NAU.  Would I write a piece for his group?  Yes…yes, I would.  And not just one…apparently I needed to write three.

I set to work during the summer of 2009 trying to find appropriate texts and finally settled on three poems by William Blake after I picked up a volume of his works while in Portland, OR.  The texts are beautiful, mysterious, nostalgic, spiritual and thoroughly Blake.

Luckily, a kindly soul captured the performance and  uploaded it to Youtube.  Below is the audio for movements one and three, and a youtube video of the second.

I. Hear the Voice of the Bard

II. The Garden of Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0H_ZwzVwcE

III. Memory, Hither Come