Score Sample - Squall - Temkin_Page_1.jpg

Score Sample - Squall - Temkin_Page_2.jpg

Squall

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Written for the USC 2016 Writer-Composer-Singer Workshop
Instrumentation Tenor and Piano
Text (used with permission of author)
Duration 6'

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Hard-Copy Performance Score (2) PDF Digital Score (2)

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L-to-R: Frank Ticheli, Daniel Temkin, Liz A. Johnson, David Hobbs, David St. John, & Hye Jung Shin after the workshop premiere of Dan and Liz’s “Squall.” — L-to-R: Frank Ticheli, Daniel Temkin, Liz A. Johnson, David Hobbs, David St. John, & Hye Jung Shin after
the workshop premiere of Dan and Liz’s “Squall.”

Program Notes

Written for the bi-annual “Writer-Composer-Singer” Project at the University of Southern California, Squall (2016) sets the poetry of Liz A. Johnson. Liz’s poem is a thoughtful and intimate portrayal of a conflict between two subjects. Are they relatives? Are they lovers? What is the rift between them? We are not sure, but we are given clues that their relationship has evolved over time, as the scene unfolds through the eyes of one narrator. Taking place in a pastoral setting, musical motifs reference poetic tropes of “blossoming almond flowers,” “red stars” of argument and tension, and a dream sequence into a “different time” free from conflict. The poem closes with the hope of redemption, as one of the subjects releases a seedpod into the wind, hoping it will grow into a new, flourishing, almond flower. Squall was written for and premiered by tenor David Wilson and pianist Lisa Sylvester as part of the 2016 unSung concert series in Los Angeles, CA.

- Daniel Temkin

The following texts are used in this work:

Liz A. Johnson

SQUALL

In an orchard wired off
from the world, almond trees flower,
heart-shaped faces suspended,

weightless as gauze or sheepskin
incandescent under the dim sky.

You reach for the soft bough
with tenderness, cradling the winter
calyx with the lines in your hands.

The hum of the freeway not far from us,
while stars gather inside my body, red stars,
separating my spine like swords.

In a different time, a map unfolding
to winter, scent of buttermilk.
Lying in the snow, your hair

wet with ice and light
vining across your face.

I would leave you in the night,
lying down in a myth of clarity.

Elsewhere, the broken plates of farmland,
a yearling braying at the door of her stable,
shackled above the fetlock joint;

and still, the two of us, behind barbed fences,
where we were never supposed to be.
Dust lifts in the air like a gold apology.

You release a seedpod to the wind:
let it blossom, let it create a whole world.