Program Notes:

Source (for mezzo-soprano and piano) was composed through a collaboration with poet Sue Hughson as part of the Vancouver International Song Institute Art Song Lab in 2013. It was premiered by mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry and pianist Steven Philcox.

Text:

silence
moving stillness
some small thing
begins

here

one drop
ancient thunder
shatters softly
disappears

moss breathes
sighs of water,
saturation
listen

hear

egress
emanation
pulse created
river born

descending
widening
song expanding
moving time

clear

river stretches
mud flats
speaking,

blood red iron
voices
seeping

elemental
into bones
and then receding

fossil layers
will record

wandering stories
saved in
stone

eroding back

to dust and air
and time when
water was not there.

- Sue Hughson