after songs

seven nocturnes for solo clarinet

25’

commissioned by and dedicated to Michael Rowlett

1. surely

2. before the bulldozers

3. after song

4. second teenhood

5. bruises

6. appalachia

7. please

When Michael Rowlett and I started planning this work together, I knew it would be based in poetry. In addition to his incredible abilities as a performer, Michael is a wonderful reader of poetry, and I wanted to take advantage of his deep literary mind. In searching for the right poet, Michael sent me some of his friend, Michael McFee’s poetry, and mentioned he had a framed copy of his poem “Surely” on his studio wall. From there, the piece was born.

I was immediately captivated by the world of McFee’s poetry. His words root memory and love into the soil. I stitched together a loose arc, alternating longer poems with selections from the collection of one-line poems The Smallest Talk, each piece thinking about the after-s of life. After loss, after youth, after death itself. Throughout, the clarinet uses an array of techniques to respond to McFee’s words: timbral trills for a nocturnal migration, a multiphonic lament before the bulldozers, singing and playing the haze of appalachia. My hope is to have written a parallel work to a fellow artist, rooting a monologue of my own into the wood.

after songs was made possible by a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission, and is dedicated with love and admiration to Michael Rowlett.