A Garden’s Time Piece: Poems by Leslie Laskey 2011, 13′

..

A Garden’s Time Piece …is a lovely conceit…. Ashworth
and Jessica Petrus play and sing expressively and knowingly throughout.”

–Laurence Vittes, GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE

..

“…lovely and evanescent – most of the songs take no longer
than a minute and leave you at once satisfied and waiting for more.”
  — Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle


sop, vn 

Commissioned by The Columbia Foundation

Available from Subito Music


Listen:

 Today’s the Day
 April Rain
 There are glories
 The end of summer
 There is a madness
 A feather pierces the snow
 Oak leaves sit in snow / Today’s the day (reprise)


Performed by:
Jessica Petrus, soprano
Jacob Ashworth, violin

A Garden’s Time Piece was commissioned for artist/poet Leslie Laskey’s ninetieth birthday.  Using two voices, soprano and violin, I really enjoyed a streamlined, elemental approach to setting his simple but evocative lines of life and love across time and space.  The voice of the violin sings the underlying emotional complexity, the subtext, of the soprano’s deceptively simple lines.