Description
Song Cycle Notes
Each of the four songs in Wings to Fly is a portrait of an influential and inspiring living woman: Malala Yousafzai, the rights activist who risked her life to report on the deplorable lack of freedom for girls living in Afghanistan under the Taliban; Lisa Randall, the astrophysicist noted for her groundbreaking theories about multidimensionality; Caster Semenya, the Olympic gold-medal runner whose naturally high testosterone levels prompted intense public scrutiny; and former First Lady Michelle Obama, who sowed the seeds of hope and change in her White House Garden as she developed awareness around the importance of nutrition.
In “I am Malala,” harsh dissonance underscores the Taliban’s violence, while upward scales and airier music paint Malala’s dream to uplift young girls. A sweeping piano melody and brilliant consonance provides a hopeful ending to the song. In “Stuck on a Brane,” diminishing rhythms in a narrow-ranged motive color our three-dimensional world, contrasting with wide arpeggios and rangy chords representing the expanse and multi-dimensionality of the universe. Wave-like piano gestures in “What am I?” depict a blurry division between sea and land at the shore. The imagery serves as a metaphor for Semenya grappling with the discovery that she is intersex. Bubbling cross rhythms and jazzy passages create vitality, while pandiatonicism and open harmonies evoke a warm, welcoming environment in “The White House Garden.” Like “I am Malala,” “The White House Garden” concludes with a sense of “hope for the future.”
