“Ferry Bluff” (Gardner)
Choral: mixed chorus
Ferry Bluff was composed during March and April, 1999 and is a setting of a poem by Virginia poet Thomas Gardner. The poem describes an autumn day in Wisconsin when the poet, standing on a sandstone bluff above a river, loses his sense of self. The music attempts both to capture the atmospheric sense of the text and to portray many of the specific images. Below is the poet’s response to hearing my setting of his poem:
“Ferry Bluff is really lovely. You’ve taken some very simple words and almost transformed them to wind and water, to elements. Mostly I found myself thinking of contrasts–the liquid layers of sound, voices dropping down through veils of them, in contrast to solid things and bursts of clarity; the play between the temporarily stable “I” and the dissolving, shifting world outside; and so on. It’s a “contest” or debate or negotiation I think about (teach about) all the time, so I’m not surprised to find it in this poem, but how much richer it seems put in musical terms.”