Program Order with Texts and Notes


CHORAL ARTS NORTHWEST
Sarah Quartel (b. 1982) – The Birds’ Lullaby

The music in the first half of our concert invokes the delight and wonder that birds inspire within us—in the way they find rest at home in their nests, as metaphors for love, in the beauty of their interaction with nature, and as communal beings in relationship with larger ecosystems. Our concert opens with poetry from a time similar to Christopher Tin’s poetry selections for The Lost Birds, the Industrial Revolution. For The Birds’ Lullaby (2020), Canadian composer Sarah Quartel selected poetry by a Kanienʼkéha (Mohawk) poet, E. Pauline Johnson. Johnson writes from the birds’ perspective, depicting their rest after a day full of carols and  anthems, asking nature to echo their songs back to them in dreamy whispers. Perhaps we humans can relate to Johnson’s birds, as we recall birdsongs from earlier today.

Text: E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)
Sing to us, cedars; the twilight is creeping
With shadowy garments, the wilderness through;
All day we have caroled, And now would be sleeping,
So echo the anthems we warbled to you;
While we swing, and your branches sing, and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

Sing to us, cedars; the night-wind is sighing,
Is wooing, is pleading to hear you reply;
And here in your arms we are restfully lying,
And longing to dream to your soft lullaby;
While we swing, and your branches sing, and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

Sing to us, cedars; your voice is so lowly,
Your breathing so fragrant, your branches so strong;
Our little nest cradles are swaying, so slowly,
While zephyrs are breathing their slumbrous song.
And we swing, while your branches sing, and we drowse to your dreamy whispering.


Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) – and the swallow (Psalm 84)

A Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of several Grammy awards, Caroline Shaw has made waves through the classical choral music world particularly through her compositions for the vocal ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, often employing a wide range of extended vocal techniques. In her setting of verses from Psalm 84, and the swallow (2017), she sets the comforting text like a warm halo in the key of D-flat major, with the mantra-like repetitions. The choir subtly paints the text, humming to illustrate the cry of the heart and flesh (without words) and gently using fluttering “n” consonants to depict “autumn rains.” The text is poetry of pilgrims, longing to be at home, and they pass through the “Valley of Bakka.” Here, Bakka has a dual meaning: it is a physical location, yet it also means “tears” in Hebrew, capturing the feelings of those not yet at home.

Text: Psalm 84
How beloved is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts.
My soul yearns, faints, my heart and my flesh cry out.
The sparrow found a house, and the swallow her nest, where she may raise her young.
They pass through the valley of Bakka, they make it a place of springs.
The autumn rains also cover it with pools.


Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) – The Turtle Dove
Josh Bedlion, baritone

Turtle doves are monogamous and pair for life. They build their nests together and take turns incubating their eggs. Although they have declined from Europe and the Middle East by 93% since 1994, they continue to be an apt metaphor among humans for a lifelong love. Turtle Doves appear in the final stanza of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s setting of The Turtle Dove, a folk song which he heard sung in 1907 by David Penfold, owner of The Plough Inn at Rusper, Sussex. The folk text captures a moment of farewell and commitment to always be true in love, no matter the journey, just like the turtle dove.

Text: English Folk Song
Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone, and leave you for a while,
If I roam away I’ll come back again,
Though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear, though I roam ten thousand miles.

So fair thou art my bonny lass, so deep in love am I;
But I never will prove false to the bonny lass I love,
Till the stars fall from the sky, my dear, till the stars fall from the sky.

The sea will never run dry, my dear, nor the rocks melt with the sun,
But I never will prove false to the bonny lass I love,
Till all these things be done, my dear, till all these things be done.

O wonder doth sit that little turtle dove, he doth sit on yonder high tree,
A-making a moan for the loss of his love, as I will do for thee, my dear, as I will do for Thee.


Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) – The Blue Bird
Christine Oshiki, soprano

Remaining in the late English Romantic era for a second bird song, C.V. Stanford’s The Blue Bird depicts the serene stillness of the blue lake found in Mary E. Coleridge’s poetry, also a British writer. Like her poetry, with the glassy lake reflecting a solitary bird’s flight above it, the choir sings patiently and slowly, while a single soprano soars above, famously ending on an unresolved, solo note.

Text: Mary E. Coleridge (1861-1907)
The lake lay blue below the hill.
O’er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.

The sky above was blue at last,
The sky beneath me blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
It caught his image as he flew.


Giselle Wyers (b. 1969) – Song Has a Bird for Rhythm

While birds can inspire amorous and comforting feelings, they can also enliven us with their vigorous optimism in insistent morning songs. Seattle composer Giselle Wyers captures this vigor in Song Has a Bird for Rhythm (2022), which we present in a newly commissioned orchestration. This is the fourth movement of a larger work, And All Shall Be Well. Wyers writes, “The text is derived from a book by Lebanese poet Michel Khalil Helayel entitled Song: A Name for Life. Helayel describes birds as creatures that fly and reside near the boundary between physical and heavenly worlds. The poem also uses birds symbolically to imagine humankind’s striving for freedom, ‘carrying story lines’ through generations into the best future possible.” Wyers sets her music with electric, rhythmic vitality, as “a call to action for all humankind to embrace that which is best and most noble in society.”

Text: Michel Khalil Helayel Translated by Laura Cerven
Song has a bird for rhythm
Song lives in blue sky
Birds never abandon song
Song birds who carry story lines from our hands
Birds who record their symphonies in the seeds of days to come
Song is the rhythm of the wind
Song birds who carry story lines from our hands
Birds who record their symphonies in the seeds of days to come
The high seas of nostalgia
Song runs through the veins
Beats in the ground of words
Song has a bird for rhythm
Song lives in blue sky
Birds never abandon song
Is not the future in song?


John Lennon, Paul McCartney, arr. Daryl Runswick – Blackbird

Paul McCartney’s Blackbird just passed its 55th anniversary, first appearing on the Beatles’ 1968 “White Album.” Years after writing the music and text, McCartney identified the U.S. Civil Rights Movement as a major influence in writing Blackbird, using hidden meaning of “blackbird” to invoke the bravery of the Little Rock students who first racially integrated schools. The text takes on greater meaning with this understanding, such as “you were only waiting for this moment to arise.” On the 1968 album, a common blackbird can be heard chirping, and in this King’s Singers choral arrangement, a whistler takes on that aviary role.

Text By: John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly;
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see;
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird, fly,
Into the light of a dark, black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly;
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.



NORTHWEST BOYCHOIR APPRENTICES (Sunday Concert)
Andrea Ramsey (b. 1997) – Grow Little Tree

Text: Anonymous
Grow, little tree.
Stretch your arms, and spread your leaves. What will you be?
Grow, little tree.
Wave your branches wild and free for all to see.
I’ll grow too, just like you.
Nurture me, I look to you for what to do.
Dance, dance in the wind.
Stand, and soak up the sun,
And when the storm brings a shower,
Let the earth catch my tears
And sprout a new flow’r.
Grow, little tree.


Sarah Quartel – In Time of Silver Rain

Text: Langston Hughes
In time of silver rain
The earth puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
the wonder spreads
of Life,
of Life,
of life!
In time of silver rain
the butterflies lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth new leaves to sing,
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,
In time of silver rain When spring
And life
Are new.


Traditional Korean – arr. Minhee Kim (b. 1991)

Korean Text:
Saeya saeya parang saeya
Nokdubate anjimara
Nokdukkochi tteoreojimyeon
Cheongpojangsu ulgoganda

English Translation:
Birdie, Birdie, bluebird,
Do not perch on the mung bean paddies.
If its flowers fall,
The mung bean merchant will weep.


David Waggoner (1926-2021) – Fill the World with Music

Text and Music: David Waggoner
Just one voice, just one song,
singing proud and singing strong
Through the day and through the night,
echoing through dark and light
Growing louder, ringing true,
beckoning to me and you
Fill the world with music.
Paint the world with sound.
Let it ring from sea to sea, and rise up from the ground
Fill the world with music, with voices loud and strong.
We’ll join together in the song.
Hear my voice, hear my song,
to the world may it belong.
Through the days and through the years,
through my laughter and my tears.
Growing louder, ringing true,
beckoning to me and you
Fill the world with music.


CHORAL ARTS NORTHWEST & NORTHWEST BOYCHOIR (Sunday)
Jonathan Reid (b. 1991) – Measure Me, Sky! 

Text: Leonora Speyer (1872-1956)
Measure me, sky!
Tell me I reach by a song
Nearer the stars;
I have been little so long.

Weigh me, high wind!
What will your wild scales record?
Profit of pain,
Joy by the weight of a word.

Horizon, reach out!
Catch at my hands, stretch me taut.
Rim of the world:
Widen my eyes by a thought.

Sky, be my depth,
Wind, be my width and my height,
World, my heart’s span;
Loveliness, wings for my flight.


-Intermission-



CHORAL ARTS NORTHWEST & CANW CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Soloists: Christine Oshiki & Nicholas Gorne (#9), Iris Cohn (#10), Aly Henniger (#11)

CHRISTOPHER TIN (b. 1976) – THE LOST BIRDS

Christopher Tin is a two-time Grammy-winning composer of concert and media music. Time Magazine calls his music ‘rousing’ and ‘anthemic’, while The Guardian calls it ‘joyful’ and ‘an intelligent meeting of melody and theme’. His music has been performed and premiered in many of the world’s most prestigious venues: Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, where he had an entire concert devoted to his music. He has also been performed by ensembles diverse as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, and US Air Force Band.

His song “Baba Yetu”, originally written for the video game Civilization IV, is a modern choral standard, and the first piece of music written for a video game ever to win a Grammy Award. His debut album, the multi-lingual song cycle Calling All Dawns, won him a second Grammy in 2011 for Best Classical Crossover Album, and his follow-up release The Drop That Contained the Sea debuted at #1 on Billboard’s classical charts, and premiered to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium. His third album To Shiver the Sky also debuted at #1, and was funded by a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign that raised $221,415, smashing all previous classical music crowdfunding records. His fourth album, The Lost Birds, is a collaboration with acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8 and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2023.

Tin is signed to an exclusive record deal with Universal under their legendary Decca label, published by Concord and Boosey & Hawkes, and is a Yamaha artist. He works out of his own custom-built studio in Santa Monica, CA.


THE LOST BIRDS

The sky was once full of birds. Magnificent flocks so enormous that they would darken the skies for days as they flew overhead. The most awe-inspiring of these flocks belonged to a bird called the passenger pigeon. At their height, they were the most numerous bird species in North America, with a population estimated at 5 billion. But over the course of a few decades, we eradicated them for food, using nothing but the crudest 19th-century hunting technology. With callous indifference, we simply shot them out of the sky, one by one, until their songs were never heard again.

The Lost Birds is a memorial for their loss, and the loss of other species due to human activity. It’s a celebration of their beauty—as symbols of hope, peace, and renewal. But it also mourns their absence—through the lonely branches of a tree, or the fading echoes of distant bird cries. And like the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine, it’s also a warning: that unless we reverse our course, the fate that befell these once soaring flocks will be a foreshadowing of our own extinction.

To pay proper tribute to these birds, I adopted a distinctly 19th-century musical vocabulary: one based on the tunefulness of folk songs, with a string orchestra accompaniment that’s both soaring and melancholy. And to put their story into words, I turned to four 19th-century poets—Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Sara Teasdale.

These women saw their world transform from a pastoral society to an industrial one—one in which humans, for the first time, began disastrously reshaping the environment. And the poems which I selected depict an increasingly fraught world: first without birds, and ultimately without humans. We are now in the 21st century, and our tools for affecting the world around us—emissions, pesticides, deforestation—are more indiscriminate and cruelly efficient. As bird, fish, animal, and insect populations crash around us, we increasingly find ourselves in a silent world—one in which the songs of birds are heard less and less. We hope that the silence can be filled by more voices speaking up on behalf of these lost birds—for their sake, and for ours.

—Christopher Tin


Flocks a Mile Wide

“Flocks a Mile Wide” is an ode to the passenger pigeon, a bird that was once so numerous that giant flocks would blacken the skies for days as they flew overhead. Their migrations were a breathtaking sight for the 19th-century traveler— large clusters would form undulating masses that swooped and swerved across the sky, much like the murmurations of starlings still visible today. That magnificent spectacle—of hundreds of thousands of birds carving out organic forms in the sky—serves as the inspiration for the “Flocks a Mile Wide” theme, and the entire story arc of The Lost Birds.

The passenger pigeon flourished until the end of the 19th century, when advancements in technology—notably the railroad and refrigerated boxcar—turned these bountiful flocks into a ready supply of cheap meat that could be hunted almost anywhere and shipped to rapidly growing urban centers. Within a few short decades, through a combination of deforestation and good old fashioned hunting rifles, their population crashed. What was once the most numerous bird in the world—with some estimates placing their numbers as high as 5 billion—rapidly went extinct, and the last wild passenger pigeon was shot and killed by a boy with a BB gun in 1900.


The Saddest Noise

“The Saddest Noise” begins the story of The Lost Birds in spring: the season of birth and renewal, and a time of year when bird songs flood the skies. But what is ordinarily a joyous sound is now riddled with sorrow, as the songs of the remaining birds remind us of the ones we’ve already lost. Dickinson’s reflections on the birds’ songs—at once tuneful, but tainted with melancholy— inspired my musical language for The Lost Birds. Heavily influenced by the vernacular of the 19th-century, the work is both pastoral and romantic, with lyrical melodies and soaring strings. But for all its romanticism and loveliness, there remains a sense of loss that permeates the music: for though the melodies we can still hear are sweet, it is the ones that are lost which we truly wish to hear.

Text adapted from a poem by Emily Dickinson
Between the March and April line —
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows and grows, —
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.
The saddest noise I know.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore,
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.


Bird Raptures

One of the most common pairings of birds in literature is the lark and the nightingale. The lark, with its cheery morning song, represents day—while the nightingale’s lonesome song summons the night. But while most 19thcentury poets chose to exalt the radiant skylark, Christina Rossetti fixated instead on the nightingale. And in her poem “Bird Raptures”, she envelops it in language of nocturnal sensuality. Awakened by the moon (a symbol of femininity), with repeated entreaties to forestall the dawn, Rossetti adopts the voice of lovers who want the night to never end.

My setting of her poem starts as a hymn—a simple chorale, where all the singers’ voices move in tandem to harmonize a melody. But as the song progresses, the voices become less synchronized, and gradually start to resemble the individualized movements of birds in a flock. Individual singers break from the ensemble, tugging at their nearest neighbors to follow, as if by magnetic attraction. Soon, the entire chorus and orchestra starts to resemble a murmuration—where individual birds have their own flight paths, but the overall movement of the flock stays contained as a harmonized organism. This flock circles and circles, building in intensity until climaxing on the words ‘silent, sweet and pale’—a rapturous exaltation of the night.

Text adapted from a poem by Christina Rossetti
The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, every thing
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.

Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale

O herald skylark, stay thy flight
To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.
For a nightingale floods us with delight.


A Hundred Thousand Birds

Sprightly and magical, “A Hundred Thousand Birds” is a setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem by the same name. It’s a celebration of the nightingale: the bird most adored by Romantic era writers as a symbol of mother nature herself. A summer bird, its nocturnal song was imbued with mystical qualities, both transformative and intoxicating. And in Rossetti’s poem, which contrasts the single nightingale with the hundred-thousand daybirds, its lonesome qualities epitomize the Romantic idea of the solitary artist in nature.

My setting of the piece is inspired by English folk song, which helps place The Lost Birds firmly in the context of the late 19th-century: a golden age of folk music preservation, when musicologists in England and North America criss-crossed their countrysides, transcribing and cataloging folk songs in towns and villages everywhere. It is this same era when rapid industrialization and the rise of cities first started reshaping the natural environment with disastrous consequences, leading us down our current path of widespread loss of biodiversity.

Text adapted from a poem by Christina Rossetti
A hundred thousand birds salute the day: —
One solitary bird salutes the night:
Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away,
And tunes our weary watches to delight;
It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say,
and to set them right;
Until we feel once more that May is May,
And hope some buds may bloom without a blight.

A hundred thousand birds salute the day: —
One solitary bird salutes the night:
This solitary bird outweighs, outvies,
The hundred thousand merry-making birds
Whose innocent warblings might make us wise
Would we but follow when they bid us rise,
Would we but set their notes of praise to words
And launch our hearts up with them to the skies.


Wild Swans

The Lost Birds is a musical memorial to extinct bird species. But it also carries a darker message: like the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine, the extinction of birds is a preface to the extinction of humans. And thus, the album is split into two halves: the story of the loss of birds, followed by the story of the loss of humankind.

“Wild Swans”, a setting of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, ends the first half of The Lost Birds. Told from the point of view of the poet, it starts with the sound of bird cries: gradually approaching from a distance, until they pass overhead, triggering feelings of longing. After an instrumental interlude, and the narrator’s impassioned declaration of freedom, the song ends as it started–with the cries of wild swans receding into the distance, foreshadowing their demise.

The migration of swans signifies autumn· and in turn, autumn signals the gradual fading of nature. But beyond their seasonal association, swans themselves have a storied place in literature, often imbued with magical properties. Across myths and legends from every culture, no other bird is transformed into a human as frequently as a swan is–thereby reinforcing the notion that the extinction of birds is synonymous with the extinction of humans. But folklore has also given us the metaphor of the ‘swan song’–the final work of an artist or musician before their death. It comes from the ancient belief that the swan stays silent its entire life, only to sing a beautiful song just before it dies. “Wild Swans” is thus the emotional heart of The Lost Birds–one final, impassioned cry, before the birds’ songs recede into the long silence of extinction.

Text adapted from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Cry…
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
And what did I see? No less, no more, and
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying wild.
Come over the town again,
trailing your legs and crying!

I looked inside my
Tiresome heart, forever living, forever dying,
House without air, I leave and lock your door.
Forever more I leave you.
Wild swans, come over the town again,
trailing your legs and crying!


Intermezzo

“Intermezzo” is an ode to the last passenger pigeon to die in captivity. Named “Martha”, she lived in a Cincinnati zoo all by herself until her death in 1914. Her story, and the stories of many similar birds who were the last of their kind, follows a familiar trajectory: the lone survivor of the species sings their song, desperately searching for a response, only to be greeted by silence. And as she gives her final performance, her melancholy song trails away, diminishing with anguish, and ultimately fading into an eternal silence. The song is now lost forever.

Today the passenger pigeon is one of the most spectacularly tragic examples of human-induced ecological collapse. It serves as a warning that if we could wipe out the most populous bird in the world with nothing by 19th-century hunting technology, how much damage can we now do in the 21st century?


Thus in the Winter

We are now in a cold, bleak winter, and the absence of birds is best expressed through the lens of the lonely tree, who witnessed the gradual disappearance–one by one–of the birds that used to sing from its boughs. To capture the desolation of this imagery, taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”, I adopted a musical approach inspired by the simple monophony of plainchant. Stark, isolated melodies gradually evolve and intertwine, until their woven layers adopt the contrapuntal shape of a Renaissance madrigal. More and more voices join the chorus, their motion overlapping like birds forming a flock, until all at once their calls reach a climax on the word ‘cry’–a plaintive echo of the final bird cries in “Wild Swans”.

Text adapted from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

But the rain is full of ghosts tonight,
that tap and sigh upon the glass
and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a pain
For unremembered birds again
That will not wake at midnight with a cry


There Will Come Soft Rains

A setting of one of my favorite childhood poems, “There Will Come Soft Rains” is inspired both by the apocalyptic WWI context in which it was originally written, but also by Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same name. Originally published by Sara Teasdale in 1918, it was introduced to a world in which humans, for the first time, could see palpable examples of their own extinction–both through the terrible human cost of the Great War, but also from the 1918 flu pandemic.

The poem portrays a post-human world: one in which society has crumbled, and mother nature has established a new order, indifferent to the extinction of humankind. It is only in such an imagined world where robins and swallows might still sing their songs, which suggests the unthinkable–that perhaps the earth can only thrive in the absence of humans.

Text adapted from a poem by Sara Teasdale
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

Not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

(The sunrise wakes the lark to sing…
Between the March and April line…
One solitary bird salutes the night…
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over…
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree…)


All That Could Never Be Said

With a simple melody inspired by children’s songs, “All That Could Never Be Said” is a setting of Sara Teasdale’s poem “In the End”. Showcasing her signature pairing of nihilism and pastoral beauty, the poem is an exploration of regret: it suggests that the consequences of our inaction are final and absolute. There are no second chances to speak up or to act, and all our missed opportunities will be lost to us until we’re reunited with them in death.

In the context of extinction, it mirrors the concept of ‘tipping points’ in environmental science-­-thresholds that, should we cross them, will be irreversible.

Text adapted from a poem by Sara Teasdale
All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
Somewhere back of the sun;

All the heart broke to forego
Shall be ours without pain,
We shall take them as lightly as girls
Pluck flowers after rain.

All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
By the sun.


I Shall Not See the Shadows

“I Shall Not See the Shadows” is based on Christina Rossetti’s poem “When I Am Dead My Dearest”. It portrays death at its most indifferent–unnoticed, unheralded. unremembered. It also suggests that forgetting is a form of extinction. too–that the finality of species lies not in the death of its last remaining members, but in the failure to preserve their memory.

We are currently in an epoch known as the sixth mass extinction–and estimates show that the current rate of extinction, caused almost wholly by manmade factors, is anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times faster than the normal baseline. And despite the high-profile collapse of many species like the passenger pigeon, the majority extinctions happen quietly.

Text adapted from poems by Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Between the March and April line –
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows and grows, –
The birds, they made it in the spring,

At night’s delicious close.
The saddest noise I know.


In the End

“In the End” serves as a coda to the story of The Lost Birds, and is a reprise of “All That Could Never Be Said”. This time, however, the musical range of the piece contracts, and one by one the singers stop singing until we’re left with a solitary voice trailing out to silence.

If The Lost Birds is a fable–where the moral of the story is a warning against inaction in the face of extinction–then the ending of the story is now ambiguous. It remains to be seen whether we will be able to forestall our own demise.

Text adapted from a poem by Sara Teasdale
All that could never be said,
All that could never be done,
Wait for us at last
Somewhere back of the sun;

And when they are ours in the end
Perhaps after all
The skies will not open for us
Nor heaven be there at our call.
After all that was never done.


Hope is the Thing with Feathers

‘Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” is a setting of the Emily Dickinson poem by the same name. It serves as an epilogue–a final reprise of the “Flocks a Mile Wide” theme, but now set for voices. It suggests that while the passenger pigeon’s song may be lost forever, we can at least honor and preserve its memory with our own songs.

We thus end The Lost Birds on a note of hope.

Text adapted from a poem by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Hope is the thing with feathers. Hope.


We offer our grateful thanks to our patrons, our most important partners in our musical journey. THANK YOU!

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Cindy Harris
City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture
Gates Foundation
Gustafson Family Fund
Edward Mencke
National Endowment for the Arts
Timothy Westerhaus
4Culture

FIR ($1,200-$2,999)
Boeing Company Matching Funds
Robert Bode & Lee Thompson
Gates Foundation
Timothy Morrisey and Melissa Gaar

SPRUCE ($600-$1,199)
Kate Abbott
Angelia Alexander
Jim Falcone
Kari and Dave Frost
Andrew Jacobson
Glenda Voller
Wyatt-Stone Giving Fund

MAPLE ($300-$599)
Forrest Anderson
John Bliss
Marie Coon
Joseph Fitzgerald
Nicholas Fritschler
William Gardner
Nicholas Gorne
Douglas Gustafson
Susan Haas
Marsha Holleman
Beth Holmes
Diane Jackson
Andrew Jacobson
Cathleen Johnson
Cheri Johnson
Sara Litchfield
Julie Marcelia
Alice Merklin
Marilyn McAdoo
Christine Oshiki
Mikaela Rink
Courtney Rowley
Richard & Kathryn Sparks
Stacey Sunde
Bill Thomas
Elizabeth and Thomas Westerhaus
David Wold
Nancy Zylstra

ALDER ($120-$299)
Anonymous
John Bliss
Marie Coon
Microsoft Corporation
Angela de Oliveira
William Gardner
Marsha Gorne
Michael and Leslie Guelker-Cone
Daniel Harbaugh
Stephanie Harris
Larry Kauffman
Ann Kelleher
Julie Marcelia
Marilyn McAdoo
Mary Morales
Jane Clayton Oakes
Christine Oshiki
Mark Powell
Susan Spencer
Lee Thompson
Iran Trenkel
Philip Tschopp
Grant Vandehey
Lorin Wingate
Sharon Zoars

SUPPORTER (up to $119)
Phil Allen
Kevin Allen-Schmid
Michele Bader
Nancy Barr
Madeline Bersamina
Lana Bolton
Cathryn Booth-LaForce
Becky Brooks
Kaleb Burris
Andrea Christensen
Joseph Cline
Kristi Dalenberg
Laurie De Leonne
Lorraine DeKruyf
Paul and Karyl Dennis
Rob Dennis
Roberta Devine
Thomas W. Doe
Jeremy Edelstein
Gail Erickson
Lucretia Ferch
Timothy Fitzpatrick
Theo Floor
Mary Forbes
Thomas and Gina French
Jessica French
Tom Fritschler
Thomas Fritschler
Sharon Fritschler
Hayley Gaarde
Melanie Garrison
Barbara Gilday
Ann Glusker
Mary Gorjance
Doug and Marjie Gustafson
Douglas Gustafson
Jerry Haas
Susan and Jerry Haas
Jeff Hall
Kelly Hamblin
Michael James Hawk
Jonah Heinen
Alyssa Henniger
David Horiuchi
Anne Huckins
Stephanie Hurst
Ryan Hyde
Christine Karnick
Anna Karnick
Mark Kloepper
Kurt Kruckeberg
Tamara Kuklenski
Akshay Kulkarni
Julie Landes
Mark Leen
Ross Leung-Wagner
Bill Levey
Marget Livak
Cynthia McAuliffe
Eugene Melson
Kathleen Morrisey
James and Muriel Nelson
James Nelson
Cynthia Park
Lisalynn Reed
Mikaela Rink
Nancy Rotecki
Joneil Sampana
Martha Sands
Jonathan Strandjord
Constance Swank
Peter Taafe
William Taylor
Sharon Trent
Celia and Victor Wakefield
Tiffany Walker
Jeff Wasierski
Tamera Wilcox
Dustin Willetts
Michael Wishkoski
Larke Witten
Matthew Witten
Amber Wogoman


Special thanks to Jonah Heinen, Cindy Harris, Nick Fritschler, and Nicholas Gorne for text setting.


Love what you heard tonight?

Buy tickets now for our next shows by clicking the links below:

      • April 20, 7 -10 PM, Annual Variety Show Fundraiser@Rooftop Brewing Co. The evening will feature performances by our talented choristers, a chance to take home some delicious desserts, and a flowing selection of beer and wine. While the libations are plentiful, seating is limited so please secure your tickets now! Tickets are $35 and include wine/beer. We hope to see you there!
      • May 11/12, Malhaar: Requiem for Water – with Reena Esmail, CANW’s 2024 Composer-in-Residence, and guest choirs to include Columbia Choirs, and choirs from Bellevue, Bothell, and Newport High Schools.

Want to support Choral Arts NW? Please donate HERE.