You Through Me
| YEAR: | 2022 |
| DURATION: | 8 minutes |
| CATEGORY: | Choir + String Quartet |
| INSTRUMENTATION: | SATB Choir, 2Vln, Vla, Vcl |
| PREMIERE: | October 9, 2022 University Presbyterian Church Conductor // Craig Hella Johnson Miró String Quartet |
Program Note:
You Through Me is a song about the Elizabeth Street Garden in SoHo, NY.
It is a story about how a physical place is linked with our experiences and memories of it. Beloved by area residents, the Elizabeth Street Garden draws over 125,000 visitors a year. In 2021, city officials announced a plan to build affordable housing on the site—a noble goal, but one that would destroy the garden. This dichotomy between who the space belongs to and what thoughts, emotions, and experiences we impress upon that place (and places in general) is at the heart of this piece. To express this concept more deeply, I chose to tell the story of the garden from the perspective of the garden itself; it observes, wonders, and at times, pleads, just as we do as humans.
Where will you go, you’ve always come to me,
Where will you come to rest your weary eyes,
To set your heavy sorrows in the soft helm of my soil,
To let the weather water them to bloom
If I am formed into another frame
Leaves to brick and soil to stone
A place to rest, a place to call your home
Then I will surely never be alone
Come back to me just as you are
To sleep within your quiet room
To love and grieve and take the time you need
For who knows what tomorrow brings
Rest easy, you can always come to me
And dry off from the storm under the eaves
Take all that I can give, there is no end
To time with you if there is time again,
Time and time in time again.
Whether I am green or slate
It’s you I wish would stay to rest
Here in my bracing arms
- Rūta Kuzmickas and Alex Berko
You Through Me was commissioned by Conspirare as part of the Joel Brauer Fund for New Music for their concert entitled Hear Me Out.
I look on as you walk through me
You are my memory, my spine,
Etched in these slabs of stone,
These vines of tangled years,
I’ve filled the branches of my trees with every phrase you wanted me to hear
Like lyrics for the city birds to sing—
The unsent letters you have
Folded in your sleeves
Dusk arrives to call you home
Evasive as light, as hours
We must spend apart, colors
Of these walls turned grey till dawn
And time and time in time again
I’ll wind up carried by your shoes
Along to where you land.
And time and time in time again
Each time the rain keeps you away
It’s you I wish it were instead