Winter Songs Rehearsal

I got to hear a rehearsal of my newest work, Winter Songs, this morning at UAA.

In 2006, the Alaska Pro Musica, UAA's pre-eminent chamber ensemble, asked me to write a work for them. I decided to compose a song cycle about winter. I chose four texts from the Alaska-Northern Rim literary quarterly, Ice Floe. Here's one of the texts:

The Path

On the ice of the forest lake
in untouched snow
I walk myself a path the shape of a large spiral.
In the middle of the lake, in the innermost of the
helix I stop, standing still.

All around me the spruce forest in dark expectation.
Comes spring, and sunshine. Slowly I sink
through the ice.

- Carl-Erik Strom
(translated from the Swedish by the author)

Drs. Walter Oliveros on violin, Tim Smith on piano, and Mark Wolbers on clarinet, will be joined by coloratura soprano Anastasia Jamieson, to perform Winter Songs and other works at the UAA Arts Recital Hall at 4:00 p.m. on January 20.

Update from the e-mails: I write music.

late winter ice on Neklason Lake