Album Notes

Movement II
"Light"
"The darkness is as light to you."
Futuristic exploration of the miraculous joining of two (God/human, man/woman) to create life/ light, the sun/ Son. Heavenly bodies collide.
A love song.

COMPOSER NOTES:

On October 31, 2008, when choral director Michael Engelhardt and I sat down discussing the possibility of a large scale multimedia choral work based on the Creation, little did I know that the ideas formulating in my mind at the time foreshadowed the coming year. Reading the texts in Genesis, Revelation, and Psalm 139, I began seeing parallels to creation and procreation - life being formed in a dark place, the importance of water, a baby's first breath and the breath of life, even the apocalyptic end of Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden with our own destruction of the planet. Images began dancing in my head, music began to play, and I knew I was ready to write "Creation".

In February 2009 I found out that I was expecting my first child. By that time, much of the music had been sketched out, as well as images for the piece. Fighting nausea and all the wonderful bodily changes accompanying a trying first trimester, I found myself practically bedridden, writing a few short phrases here and there in between bouts of sickness. Somehow I still wrote the work.

On October 31, 2009, exactly a year after the idea of Creation was born, I gave birth to my first child, Eva Rose Young. Named "Eva" (translated "Eve", or "First Woman"), she transformed my life and gave new meaning to "Creation". Little Eva makes her musical debut throughout the oratorio as sampled sounds hidden within the electronic subtext.

The music of "Creation" is derived from three major influences in my life: traditional church choral music, electroacoustic music, and Afro-Cuban music. Weaving the three together into a cohesive work took much planning. Musically, the work moves from the impersonal and electronic, starting in Movement 1 with a single sine wave slightly manipulated and culminating with a full human drumming ensemble in Movement IV. The Final Chorus represents humanity's ultimate fall and destruction - of self, of nature, of spirituality - and calls for the return of the Creator now forgotten.