Passing (Whitman)
Choral: women's chorus
Passing was commissioned by Voci Women’s Chorus to honor one of their founding members who was terminally ill with cancer. She selected both me as the composer and the text: the final section of Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. The work is both haunting and ecstatic over its 11-minute course, beginning and ending somberly, but digressing into moments of passion and austerity as befits this iconic poem.