Seasons (2015)
BCC's latests CD was released in November 2015 and is available to purchase for $15. Please contact the BCC office for more information about purchasing at 617-778-2242 or info@bostonchildrenschorus.org. Seasons is available on iTunes, CD Baby and Amazon.
1. Spring
Music by Joshua Shank
Text by Sara Teasdale
The cold spring rain is falling;
Out in the lonely tree
A bird is calling, calling.
Slowly over the earth
The wings of night are falling
There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
My heart like the bird is calling.
The cold spring rain is falling.
2. Summer
Music by Joshua Shank
Text by Robert Ressler
The last child of snow builds flowers with her hands,
while by stardust the scales are weighted against her.
She dreams to be more than the blizzard.
That her fields will occupy the eternity
whispered between baby’s breath and the last red beat.
It is summer and already the sun is falling.
3. Autumn
Music by Joshua Shank
Text by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far off,
as if in the heavens distant gardens had withered:
they fall with gestures that say “no.”
And in the nights the heavy earth falls
From all the stars into loneliness.
We are falling. This hand is falling.
And look at the others: it is in them all.
And yet there is One who holds this falling
with infinite softness in her* hands.
* Original text is “his”
4. Winter
Music by Joshua Shank
Text adapted from e.e. cummings
snow
beautiful is the unmeaning of (silently) falling (everywhere) snow
(two faces at a dark window) this father
and his child are watching snowflakes
(falling over time space doom dream while floats the whole
perhaps less mystery of paradise)
mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings against the silence of his mother’s
smile – whose only secret all creation sings.
5. Home
Music by Stephen Feigenbaum
Text by Elisa Gonzalez
I.
Mama sings of the sea when she does the laundry,
or she sings of God in old hymns she learned in West Virginia.
So God washes upon on shore the color of sand.
And the sea shanties keep us company
in the mornings, and in the evenings when she gathers up the laundry
after a long day hanging on the line.
II.
I am a gatherer of magnolia stories
for Mama, a colonial explorer
with hundreds of cases
for biological specimens,
a thousand flower presses, a gun.
Sweetbay, Mama loves the name
Sweetbay
the underbelly of a secretive jungle bird
found at long last.
III.
Mama sobbing by the sink as she soaps the dishes,
watching the backyard grow indistinct
fading into green swirls.
Mama in bed all day: I only want to sleep.
I want to sleep forever.
I fall asleep with Mama, dreaming.
I stand between her body and a black wave.
The wave has reached us where we huddle.
Wake up, wake up.
I can show you the color of water.
Mama, to everything that’s sad
I can add something happy,
a pure unwasted yellow.
The sun will come alive.
And finally the boats will come too, circling under the sun.
6. Snow by Morning
Music by Joshua Shank
Text by May Swenson
Some for everyone,
Plenty,
and more coming –
fresh, dainty, airily arriving
everywhere at once,
transparent at first,
each faint slice –
slow, soundlessly tumbling;
then quickly, thickly, a gracious fleece
will spread like youth, like wheat,
over the city.
Each building will be a hill,
all sharps made round –
dark, worn, noisy narrows made still
wide, flat, clean spaces;
streets will be fields, cars be fumbling sheep;
a deep, bright harvest will be seeded
in a night.
By morning we’ll be children
feeding on manna,
a new loaf on every doorsill.
7. Spring Song (from Madame White Snake)
Music by Zhou Long
Text by Cerise Lim Jacobs
Behind the bamboo, sprays of peach blossom.
When spring warms the stream, ducks are first to know.
The ground is covered with weeds, the water studded with reeds.
It is time for the blowfish to swim upstream.
8. Summer Song (from Madame White Snake)
Music by Zhou Long
Text by Cerise Lim Jacobs
A row of peaks from the front;
A deep line from the side;
Near, far, high, low,
A new shape wherever the mists part.
We cannot recognize the true face of Mount Lu,
Because we are always in it.
9. Autumn Song (from Madame White Snake)
Music by Zhou Long
Text by Cerise Lim Jacobs
Half moon and Mount Emei in autumn,
Mirrored in the waters of the river Ping Qiang.
I leave Qing Xi for Three Gorges,
Longing for the autumn moon in Yu Zhou.
10. Winter Song (from Madame White Snake)
Music by Zhou Long
Text by Cerise Lim Jacobs
A thousand mountains;
Birds all flown;
Ten thousand paths;
Footprints vanish.
A boat with one lone man
Fishing on the snowy river.
11. Flower of Beauty
Music by John Clements
Text by Sydney Bell
She is my slender small love, my flower of beauty fair
From the whiteness of her little feet to the shining of her hair;
More fair she is than April rain on daffodil or tree:
She is my slender small love, my flower of beauty, she.
I know she walks in the evening down by the riverside,
And the grasses lean to kiss her robes who soon will be my bride:
More dear to me her little head than earth or sky or sea!
She is my slender small love, my flower of beauty, she.
12. Im Wald (from Gartenlieder, Op. 3 No. 6)
Music by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
Text by Emanuel von Geibel
In the forest, in the bright sunshine,
When all the buds spring open,
There I, in their midst, like
To sing a song.
How it cheers me in sorrow and joy,
In waking and in dreaming,
To sing at the top of my lungs
To the trees.
And they understand me well;
The leaves all listen
And join in at the right moment
With rustling.
And further the sounds resound
In treetops, rocks and bushes,
Mrs. Nightingale also warbles clearly
In their midst.
There the heart feels from its own sound
That it may do what it dares.
O fresh joy: Song! Song
In the greenery!
13. Amazing Grace
Traditional, arr. Jackson Berkey
Text by John Newton
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come:
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
And Grace will lead me home.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.
