Song of the Sky Loom

"In the summer of 2011, while I was visiting my friends Don and Sally Roberts in Santa Fe, Sally asked me if I would be interested in writing a new choral work for Don in celebration of his upcoming 75th birthday. The idea appealed to me very much, so I readily agreed to write the piece. Since Don has enjoyed a lifelong interest in the American Southwest Pueblo people and their customs, Sally provided me with several Tewa texts, in English translation, to consider for musical setting. I was particularly drawn to the imagery of Song of the Sky Loom, so that poem became the basis for the new work.

The music begins with two baritone soloists singing an introductory 'call-and-response' to which the entire chorus eventually responds. The opening line of text is first presented in fragmented form, as if voices from all areas of nature gradually rise up and then merge into a unified chordal texture. As the text turns to the imagery of weaving, the musical texture, accordingly, becomes contrapuntal: individual melodic lines, sung by solo voices or small groups (the 'weft'), intertwine with each other and also with the main chorus, which provides the overall harmonic structure (the 'warp'). The following chorale section, infused with occasional chromatic inflections, represents the massive 'rainbow' in the text and brings the work to a unified conclusion.

Song of the Sky Loom was first performed by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, under the direction of Joshua Habermann, on July 19, 2016 with three subsequent performances during the following two weeks." -Frank Ferko