The Painter on Silk (2025)
Instrumentation:
SSAA chorus
Piano
Duration: ca. 7’
commissioned by the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus
Alex Canovas, artistic director
Text by Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
When he could get no more silk,
He stopped painting
And only thought of roses.
The day the conquerors
Entered the city
The old man
Lay dying.
And wished he could paint the roses
Bursting into sound.
There was a man
Who made his living
By painting roses
Upon silk.
He sat in an upper chamber
And painted,
And the noises of the street
Meant nothing to him.
When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums,
He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses
Bursting in the sunshine,
And smiled as he worked.
Performance history:
5/2025: New York, NY
Young New Yorkers’ Chorus
Alex Canovas, conductor