I’m excited to share the marvelous new piece The Rockford Aces premiered this week.
Eventually by Sean Ivory sets a wonderful text from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It for TTBB choir and clarinet. It is lyrical, exciting, and heartfelt. My students all loved working on it.
It’s always a special honor to collaborate with a composer on a new piece – it is certainly one of my missions as a conductor. And especially when the piece is as outstanding as this one, it’s a real thrill.
The piece was premiered on Monday, April 20 at the Rockford Choirs Spring Concert. The video below is from the pre-premiere performance at the MSVMA State Solo & Ensemble Festival on April 18. It features Julian Scott on clarinet and Levi Vande Wege as the baritone soloist.
Here is the text of the piece:
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean