We Are Here to Shine! (download)

Description

Voicing: SSAA (div) a cappella

Level: 4

Duration: 3:10

To see perusal score, please contact Jocelyn.

Sometimes we need reassurances that it’s OK to be who we are. This work will invigorate your singers with confidence and joy.

Text

How to Read the Weather, by Julia Klatt Singer

Imagine you are the sky

Wake up a little cloudy

Shift from ink to orange to blue

More clouds? Less blue? More blue.

Whistle to the wind. Coax

The seas to dance—nothing wild today

Something rhythmic and steady

The syncopated music of you—

Still we won’t be able to look away.

How the birds sing. How the leafless

Branches sway. Pour golden light

Make it clear; you and me, we

Are made of weather. Today

We are here to shine.

Program Note

Writing empowering music for women to sing will always be one of my favorite compositional endeavors. I grew up listening to my mother and her two sisters singing in three-part harmony. They all had daughters around the same time, so from the age of ten or eleven I was singing in three-part harmony with my close cousins. Music for treble voices will always feel like home to me.

“We Are Here to Shine” honors Aimee Beckmann-Collier and her career devoted to choral excellence and the education of young musicians. It needed to be a celebration and a testament to her dynamic spirit! This text by Minnesotan Julia Klatt Singer inspires us to embrace who we truly are, unafraid to show the world all the colors and depth of our personality. It is only by being honest and truthful to ourselves that we reach our ultimate potential, shining out brilliant light for all the world to see.

~ Jocelyn Hagen