Photograph by Scott Ordway (California, 2024)

Evening Land (2025–2026)

Various voice types, piano / 40 minutes

PREMIERE

Commissioned by Stanford University Department of Music

NOTE

Evening Land is a yearlong creative exploration of songwriting and vocal music, with a thematic focus on landscape, community, and culture in California and the wider American West. 

The project includes three intensive residencies with visiting composer Scott Ordway (Head of Composition, Rutgers University),  including one-on-one coaching, group workshops, and public talks. Student composers and vocalists will collaborate to create and premiere original vocal works inspired by shared reading and ongoing conversation about the themes of California landscape and culture—interpreted broadly to include both human and non-human environments.

The project culminates in the world premiere of a new song cycle by Scott Ordway—performed by Stanford voice students—alongside new student compositions reflecting the diverse voices and places that shape California today.

This short song is based on a passage from Wings of the Dove by Henry James. Its short text expresses a sense of longing for the faraway, the immeasurable, the unknown, and the unknowable.

The Ceiling, the Treetops, the Sky (2018)
Text by Scott Ordway after Henry James

The ceiling,
The treetops,
The sky.

To drop what was near,
And to take up what was far.

Adapted from Henry James, Wings of the Dove (1902)

"It was the accident, possibly, of his long legs, which were apt to stretch themselves; of his straight hair and his well-shaped head, never, the latter, neatly smooth; and apt into the bargain, at the time of quite other calls upon it, to throw itself suddenly back and supported behind by his uplifed arms and interlocked hands, place him for unconcionable periods of time in communion with the ceiling, the treetops, the sky. He was in short visibly absent-minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was near and to take up what was far."