Rehearsal Recordings


   
Fabric of the Universe
Time,
An empty echo of passing life, it is
the past, the present, and the future.
Binding, shaping, changing, it
clings to the chronologic universe.
No length of travel, strife and joy
Will escape its hold,
But, in its purest,
Will forever hold the answers
Of all that is unknown.

- Katy Spencer
The comet dances with the sun. It’s orbit’s curled
In conic sections in our heads. It beguiles
Ten billion eyes fanned across a peacock world
When it fans its tail across ten million miles,
Then, perihelion past, bends to its out-bound pace
Beyond the Dame of Love, the Lord of War
And paradise to let towards open space––
The earth gone now and sun shrunk to star.

There titanic galaxies redden and recede
Like trans-cosmic steamers plunging into night,
And a comet’s a raft on the Sea of Naught
Where “Let there be light!” seems to have gone unsaid,
And God’s forgot his great decree
That Being is but Nothing cannot be.

- Jim Togeas
Jumbled diamonds halved and quartered turned and sorted, smallest angles all the same. Does this cutting, folding, stitching, piecing, pairing, splice of planes drive me crazy or keep me sane? Count the sunbursts, crosses, stars. Count the prisms, ladders, bars. Lock their union in your eye. Does this cutting, folding, stitching, piecing, pairing, splice of planes drive you crazy or keep you sane? Thirty-two panels, thirty-two worlds thirty-two ways to measure our days our days, our days. Every diamond bright and cut every point aligned. Peace in pattern’s harmony the chaos of the world contained made shining in my hands where peace has kept me sane. - Mary Moore Easter
  The Sunset
   The sun has such a pretty quilt.
   Each night he goes to bed,
   it’s made of gold,
   with great long stripes of red.
   And bordered by the softest tints,
   all the shades of gray.
   It’s put together by the sky,
   and quilted by the day.

— Laura Coates Reed
There was such a lot of singing and this was my pleasure, too.

The boys all sang in the fields, and at night we all sang.
The chapels were full of singing.

It was singing, singing all the time.
I have had pleasure.
I have had singing.

- Fred Mitchell
from AKENFIELD: PORTRAIT OF AN ENGLISH VILLAGE by Ronald Blythe
(paraphrase by the composer)
The fire glows and flickers,
the air rises softly,
the water rises and collects in the valley,
the earth waits for rain.
What s light forces upwards
while heavy things sink,
everything in the world reforms itself anew.
No cloud shows in the heavens,
the sea is calm,
the wind blows soft and quietly.
the slopes are blooming again,
the barren countryside is green again,
the sun shines warmly,
spring is here.
The whole world is born again,
new joys are calling.
Just as the Lord rose again,
everything is filling with life,
everything feels the power of its creator,
the elements serve the Lord.

Gīta-vādite

[ətə yədi ɣiːtə vaːditə lokə kaːmo bəvəti səmkəlpaːd evjasə ɣiːtə vaːdite səmuʈhistəta]
If he becomes desirous of the world of song and music, out of his mere thought, song and music arise.

[tenə ɣiːtə vaːditə lokenə səmpəno məhiːjəte]
Possessed of that world of song and music he is happy.

- Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, VIII.ii.8