My first collaboration with Dessa was in 2014, a joint commission from Minneapolis Public Schools. We met at a church in my neighborhood and sketched out the details to Controlled Burn, which was premiered by a mass choir and orchestra of students in Minneapolis. Controlled Burn has since been arranged into two smaller chamber versions and also for SSAA voices. The project was so successful that I approached her a few years later to see if she’d collaborate with me again, this time for a piece from Macalester College. The resulting work Look Out Above has become even more successful with performances across the country and for several ACDA honor choirs. The original SATB a cappella work with soloists can now be done with SSAA or TTBB a cappella choirs. In 2025, it was rearranged again, this time for developing treble voices and piano.
Poor Atlas and Into the Spin are faithful arrangements of Dessa’s tunes, off her album A Badly Broken Code.
My favorite track continues to be Call Off Your Ghost, off of Dessa’s 2013 album Parts of Speech. (But really, it’s all amazing.)
Jocelyn
