Program Note

The text for Still I Sing was inspired by members of the Alma Choir, for whom this piece was composed. For their 2025 tour, the Alma Choir and performed a program centered on the theme of love. I wanted to compose a piece that explored what self love meant to the choir, so we held a stream-of-consciousness writing session with the group in the fall of 2024 and compiled the text for this piece based on their responses.

The vulnerability and maturity of these students’ responses was stunning. They wrote about their most closely-held dreams, their greatest insecurities, and their strategies for loving themselves no matter what. It strikes me that as a young person I would almost certainly have given a shallow response to this exercise out of my own fear of being vulnerable in a crowd. That a group of students who barely knew me so willingly shared thoughtful responses about such a personal topic gives me hope for our collective empathy. My deepest thanks to the students who participated.

Still I Sing is dedicated to the Alma Choir and Dr. Nicole Mattfeld.