The Seeds (2025)
Duration: 20:00 minutes
Instrumentation: soprano, viola, and piano
Premiere: February 10, 2026 by Lindsay Kesselman, soprano, Scott Rawls, viola, and Annie Jeng, piano at University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Notes:
The Seeds is a long poem from Cecily Parks’ 2025 collection of the same name. Brilliant and evocative and wide-ranging, as I read and re-read this work, I began to see musical possibilities and a way to somehow reflect my experience inhabiting the world of the poem. The musical structure that emerged is a set of linked variations – eight to be precise – on a simple theme of nine notes, heard by the viola alone at the beginning of the piece. These variations are sometimes separated by brief interludes or recitations, but they flow without pause one into the next. The result, I hope, is something like the experience of the poem: a kind of free fantasy that nevertheless feels like a meditation on a few deeply connected ideas.