on cycles

Composed for the 2025 soundSCAPE Festival in Switzerland, this piece sets a text by poet and close friend Madison Delaney. Scored for Pierrot ensemble and soprano voice, the work unfolds as a kind of interior monologue — intimate and searching, like a soliloquy spoken into the void.

Delaney’s poetry is deeply introspective, capturing the emotional dissonance and ambiguity of endings — not just events, but the people and moments we carry long after they're gone. I sought to reflect this emotional turbulence through dynamic extremes and shifting textures: waves of intensity crash into moments of haunting stillness; angular, jagged rhythms stand in contrast with slower, more ethereal harmonies that feel suspended in time.

The soprano functions as a true soloist, supported by the ensemble like a theatrical pit orchestra — responding to, echoing, and filling in the spaces around her voice with solo lines and ensemble gestures. In composing this work, I was also conscious of gender representation in vocal music. Rather than inserting my own narrative, I chose to collaborate directly with Delaney to amplify her words and avoid the traditional operatic trope of women’s stories being told or shaped through a male lens. This piece is a space for one woman’s voice — both the poet’s and the performer’s — to speak freely, without interruption.

World premiere performed July 6, 2024 at soundSCAPE Festival, Hindemith Music Centre in Blonay Switzerland.