Basic Information

Instrumentation: Choral (SATB)
Duration: ~5:00
Year composed: 2020

Description

In April, WNYC (New York’s public radio station) collected poems written by listeners under the hashtag #PAUSEPoetry. These poems reflect how people were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

As the pandemic wore on, safe in my New Jersey home, I felt a severe disconnect from New York – my friends there, my choir, and the city itself, which was in a state unlike any I’d ever seen. #PAUSEPoetry helped me find that connection, specifically the poem I used for this piece’s text setting.

We all have our pandemic rituals, actions to make us feel connected during isolation, whether is Zoom calls or games with friends online. Waving to the neighbors at seven, cheering for healthcare workers, went on for weeks in New York. It gave me hope that we would persist, and I wanted to celebrate that through this piece!

Neighbors at Seven was written for C4’s live remote performance project, featuring aleatoric lines to account for latency and solos to bring the lyrics out. This piece is free for any choir to perform, both remotely and, one day, in person! Let me know if you’d like to perform it.

Lyrics

What was I thinking?
(Wave to neighbors at seven)
Small things seemed so big!

courtesy of Twitter user @onaggregate

Score & Recording

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