Full Score (81 pp.) + Piano/Vocal Score (58 pp.) + Parts (33 pp.)

Performing Forces: SATB Chorus, Piano, Maracas, and Bongos

Format: PDF

Duration: 18 min.

Catalogue No.: 131

Program note for A Year and a Day

A Year and a Day was composed in 2004 and the music owes its existence to a most fortuitous set of circumstances. Officially, the work was commissioned by Amare Cantare and its director, Dr. Catherine Beller-McKenna. The premiere performances were made possible by a Community Arts Project grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. In 2004, Beller-McKennas’ daughter, Lydia, was a student at Moharimet Elementary School in Madbury, N.H., and at that time the entire school was involved in a creative project featuring story telling through an image-making process called “picture writing” developed by U.N.H. artist, author and teacher, Beth Olshansky. The project was directed by Moharimet teacher, Susan O’Byrne, and the result was that virtually every student in the school made an image (or several) and then composed poetry to relate the story of what was happening in the images. Catherine Beller- McKenna, together with Dianne Colby Dean, the founder and director of Sandpipers, Seacoast Children’s Chorus, came up with the idea that the students’ poetry could be set to music thereby illustrating both the poems and the images in an additional way. I was fortunate to be asked to compose the music for this project, and I was very motivated to do it as I had had a long and close personal relationship with both Dianne Dean and Susan O’Byrne. All three of my daughters had enjoyed singing in the Sandpipers chorus along with Lydia Beller-McKenna, and all three had been happy students in Susan O’Byrne’s first and second grade class at Moharimet! The subjects of the poems based on the pictures ranged from times of the day and types of weather to seasons of the year, hence the title of my composition: A Year and a Day.

I was a member of a committee, consisting of several parents, the two choral directors, and myself, whose task it was to choose which poems to set to music. This was a very difficult task as we started out with over 500 poems to choose from. After the committee narrowed the choices down to about 50 poems, I selected the final dozen or so based on their many fine qualities, not the least of which was their musical compatibility. I am grateful to all of the student poets, and they should feel very proud of their work. Mr. Dennis Harrington, meanwhile, the outstanding Principle of Moharimet School since 1989, should feel very proud of the accomplishments of his students and their teachers. I cannot think of a group of similarly short poems that could do a better job of evoking such colorful thoughts and feelings about the course of one day intermingled with imagery of the seasons of one entire year.

The titles and authors of the poems are: Spring Sunrise by Samuel Owens; Sunshine by Jonathan Jurgel, Eliza MacDonald, and Christian Davis; Summer Afternoon by Jack Auty; Clouds by Caitlin Jones; Rain by Aaron Zielfelder, Ian Avery-Leaf, and Zachary Jones; Storm and Rainbow by Morgan Fay; and finally, Sea at Night by Benjamin Patton, and Winter Night by Catherine Potter.

I am also indebted to the U.N.H. student singers and instrumentalists and to Dr. William Kempster for their talents and dedication in bringing A Year and a Day to life once again. Special thanks are due to the sopranos and altos of the UNH Chamber Singers who are singing not only their own parts but the parts of the children’s chorus as well!

---Christopher Kies, April, 2008