Description
We Are the Garden takes the audience on a dramatic and elemental journey through the natural world, exploring Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Humanity through the vivid poetry of Joyce Sidman. With a vibrant blend of rhythmic drive, lyrical beauty, and emotional depth, this five-movement work gives voice to the forces that shape our lives and the world around us.
Each element is brought to life through dynamic textures and expressive choral writing, supported by the warmth of cello, the clarity of piano, and the color of percussion. The final movement draws the elements together in a powerful meditation on human existence—our roots, our transformation, and our capacity for connection and song.
Commissioned by Cantabile Youth Singers of Silicon Valley under the direction of Elena Sharkova, We Are the Garden invites performers and audiences alike to listen deeply, breathe fully, and remember that we are—together—a living part of this Earth.
Text
1. Fire
Together, we boil, we teem, we hum. We burn like a golden sun.
~ excerpted from “Winter Bees”
Let the fire of this moment — with my friends beside me — burn
and burn
and burn.
~ excerpted from “Time Spells”
2. Water
I am the lake. I wait for you
with cool, blue arms and silver face.
~ excerpted from “Lake’s Promise”
3. Air
I belong to the air.
I step from my body, invisible.
~ excerpted from “Invisibility Spell”
Remember to breathe.
~ excerpted from “Riding a Bike at Night”
4. Earth
the earth breathes, rumbles, wakens membranes open all is smell
we are the garden
rich in each other’s scent
we are the soft, dark place leaves come from
furred and secret
tender, tender
on the edge of dream on the edge of storm curled together deep, rooted
rapt
in our own dark spawning thunder
~ excerpted from “On this Spring Night”
5. (Humanity)
There is a moment
when edges dissolve
and I see this world
for what it is: a surge of brilliant matter folding endlessly in on itself
and suddenly the great mystery
is not life or death
but how we come to be what we are out of all the possibilities.
~ excerpted from “Preparing the Soil”
Oh, yes,
says my heart.
Whatever the day brings, let it bring.
Whatever the music,
let me sing.
~ excerpted from “Song in a Strange Land”