for soprano and piano

 

Duration: 7 minutes

Text: Patrick Rosal poem “Children Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard” in The Last Thing: New & Selected Poems by Patrick Rosal. Copyright © 2021. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc. (New York).

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Program Note:

“Children Walk on Chairs” is the first in a series of works I’m writing for soprano Katrina Saporsantos. These works set the poetry of Patrick Rosal and his own exploration of the Asian-American immigrant experience, as the son of Filipino parents in the US. This poem (based on a photo by photojournalist Noel Celis) is part connection but also disconnection. It expresses a journalist’s observation and a human’s emotion in the aftermath of a typhoon that hit Taytay in the Philippines. Using this natural disaster as a catalyst, the poem deals with feelings of connection and disconnection for members of the Filipino diaspora, feelings that someone (dis)connected from their ancestral home might experience in the wake of a natural disaster or national tragedy.

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Premiere:

Katrina Saporsantos, soprano; Benjamin Dia, piano

Inversion Ensemble presents ETERNAL GRAFFITI

KMFA Draylen Mason Music Studio, Austin, Texas

April 9, 2022

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