Open again a turn of light (2023)

For Choir (SATB) and Orchestra

Commissioned by the Brown University Orchestra and Brown Arts Institute on the occasion of the inauguration of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Premiered on October 20-21, 2023 by the Brown University Orchestra, Mark Seto, Director, and Brown University Chorus, Louis Frederick Jodry, Director.

Text by Sawako Nakayasu

Duration: 5 minutes

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Brown University Orchestra and Chorus | Mark Seto and Louis Frederick Jodry, directors

Read the feature article about the Brown for the inauguration of Brown’s Lindemann Performing Arts Center

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Program Note

It is a rare opportunity to write a piece of music to open a new concert hall. The first performance in a new venue can be a moment filled with immense pent-up excitement, curiosity, and promise, as well as some nervousness. New beginnings also offer meaningful opportunities for reflection, to think of where we have been, where we are now and where we go from here.

In the spirit of Brown’s culture of interdisciplinary collaboration, I wanted to celebrate the opening of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center with a collaboration across artforms. With the support of the Brown University Orchestra, Chorus and Brown Arts Institute, I invited Brown Assistant Professor of Literary Arts, Sawako Nakayasu, to write a new newly commissioned poem, Open again a turn of light, that I set to music for orchestra and choir.

When Sawako and I met to discuss ideas, I shared two phrases that had recently inspired me in my thinking for this occasion: “soul-sustaining light” and “refuge.” These are BAI Artistic Director Avery Willis Hoffman’s words from a presentation she gave to the faculty a few weeks earlier about the hall’s transformative potential as a physical space for inspiring artistic creation. My conversations with Sawako soon spanned a wide range of ideas and concepts, finding metaphors in natural phenomena such as wind and waves. Sawako returned a few weeks later with a poem that encapsulates a world of experiences. Grounded in the imagery of light, the text continually returns to the gesture of “opening,” each time helping us see this act through a new window of feeling.

In the music, I aim to capture the poetry’s interplay between dark and light, play and contemplation, momentary feelings and monumental shifts, and also of looking forward and looking back. I was particularly captivated by the imagery of a few phrases from the poem: “open a rock to open the light,” “a turn of light,” and the weaving between a loom’s “warp” and “weft.” The music travels between low and high registers and dense and luminous timbres as it embraces and encompasses a world in between. At various points, the conductor’s hands sweep across the musicians, creating waves of sound that ripple over the stage. As I composed, I thought of how a new university arts center, like the journey though the liberal arts collegiate experience itself, may be home to a spectrum of experiences that serve to open the mind.

Open again a turn of light was commissioned by the Brown University Orchestra and Brown Arts Institute on the occasion of the inauguration of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center, for premiere October 20-21, 2023 by the Brown University Orchestra, Mark Seto, Director, and Brown University Chorus, Louis Frederick Jodry, Director. 

- Eric Nathan