Portals: Pollination

for SSAATTBB chorus.

Duration: c. 10 minutes

Year of composition: 2016

Commissioned and premiered by Ars Nova Singers

Based on the eponymous painting by Julie Maren and poetry by Erin Robertson.

Program Note:

For their 30th anniversary, Boulder’s acclaimed a cappella ensemble, the Ars Nova Singers, performed their collaborative and interdisciplinary project, “Shared Voices.” For this performance, they assembled works of Colorado visual artists, invited poets/writers to view these works and to create new poetry based on them, and then commissioned four Colorado composers to write new music for chorus using these words. Conor Abbott Brown set poetry by Erin Robertson which was inspired by a painting by Julie Maren. Brown framed Robertson’s and Maren’s works in a world of invented language and an unmoored, eerie musical landscapes.

Portals: Pollination by Erin Robertson rustle of black crepe a fly’s dull drone acrid smoke of the charhouse and still the moon shines down illuminates our frail, striving forms touches each ringed wreath of remembrance gently, tenderly- hyphae fill in orbits beetles strip all things to bone we know none of the pain of disassemblage only the effort to be whole to go about each round of days and leave some fertile ground for some other soul to tread

(Audio/video not publicly available at this time.)