Selections from Sea Dream Elegies

Sea Dream Elegies (2016)

for SATB chorus, oboe/English horn & cello
Commissioned by James Conlon and the Cincinnati May Festival
Text by Nahal Navidar
20 minutes

WORLD PREMIERE
The Cincinnati May Festival Chamber Choir
James Conlon, conductor
Robert Porco, chorus conductor
May 22, 2016, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, KY

Sea Dream Elegies
I. Between Calm and Thunder
II. A Thousand Splintered Shards
III. For Whom Does Your Heart Despair?
IV. The Dance of Moon and Sea

Poet Nahal Navidar writes:
"Sea Dream Elegies utilizes nautical imagery to represent the journey from love and comfort, pain and loss, to peace and acceptance. Each movement shifts between the varied mercurial temperaments of the sea to evoke the emotional state of the protagonist. Within the ocean's ability to captivate, entice, torment, overwhelm, and finally, to soothe, each movement offers and evolving perspective from the protagonist. In the action of gathering the smooth sea glass - once a whole bottle filled with dreams, once tiny bits of painful shards - the emotional arch of the piece is realized as dreams are reborn in an expected form offering strength and resilience."

IV. The Dance of Moon and Sea
Text by Nahal Navidar

The tender shore embraces
The beaming fire orb
Whose dancing light awakens
My tired breathless soul

Rays catch the deep-cast colors
Where sea-glass crowns the shore
As the sun descends into the sky
Delivering the moon

The moonlight cools my skin
As I walk the speckled shore
Gathering polished sea-glass
Worn smooth through the turbulent storm

The ocean whispers a lullaby to the breezy, sleeping palm

A calm, stillness lives between
The dance of moon and sea
I hold the glass in hopeful prayer
Renaming all my dreams