A Forest unfolding
A collaborative cantata inspired by trees
A Forest Unfolding is a collaborative work inspired by recent scientific research into the rich communication and subterranean connectivity between trees. Four writers—the environmentalists Bill McKibben and Joan Maloof, along with the novelists Richard Powers and Kim Stanley Robinson—selected prose passages and poems on the relations among people and trees. They presented these selections to four composers—Eric Moe, Melinda Wagner, Stephen Jaffe, and David Kirkland Garner—who set these words into a linked sequence of recitatives and arias. The resulting whole traces a narrative arc from human estrangement from nature to a glimpse of the endless cooperation that knits a forest together. A collective process of many makers yielded a work in the cantata tradition about the need for human reintegration with the rest of the deeply collaborative living world.
-Richard Powers
A Forest Unfolding (2018)
for soprano, baritone, narrator, flute/alto flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, violoncello, and piano
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Music by David Kirkland Garner, Stephen Jaffe, Eric Moe, and Melinda Wagner
Text by Wendell Berry, Anne LaBastille, W.S. Merwin, Richard Powers, and Henry David Thoreau
I. No Voices and no shade
1. Native Trees by Eric Moe (Text by W.S. Merwin)
2. From The Book of Job by David Kirkland Garner (Text from the Book of Job)
II. They have stood round my sleep
3. Eternal Rhythm by Stephen Jaffe
4. Woodswoman Etude by David Kirkland Garner (Text by Anne LaBastille)
5. Trees by Stephen Jaffe (Text by W.S. Merwin)
III. A dreamer, dreaming
6. From Thoreau’s Notebooks by David Kirkland Garner (Text by Henry David Thoreau)
7. In a Country Once Forested by Melinda Wagner (Text by Wendell Berry)
IV. Everything in the forest
8. Variation-Deciso by Stephen Jaffe
9. Eternal Song by David Kirkland Garner (Text by Richard Powers)
A Forest Unfolding (2018) - live performance
featuring Richard Powers
Music by Garner, Jaffe, Moe, & Wagner
Performed by Thomas Meglioranza, Laura Gilbert, members of the Ciompi Quartet, and USC faculty
Presented by The Southern Exposure New Music Series
Friday, April 14, 2023 @ 7:30pm
Recital Hall | School of Music | University of South Carolina
A Forest Unfolding (2018) - live performance
Performed by NOVUS NY featuring Featuring Margaret Carpenter Haigh, soprano; Thomas Meglioranza, baritone; and Neil Netherly, narrator
December, 8, 2023
Trinity Church Wall Street | New York City