Three American Haiku

SATB a cappella

Duration 3:15

Text by Klaton Smith

Notes

Back in 1991 I ran into my former student Klaton Smith as he was working at a grocery store and mentioned that I was writing a choral piece and needed a text about birds. He grabbed a brown paper back and jotted down “The Beautiful Songbird” with a Sharpie. A few years later I asked him to write some more haiku to complete this set. I think they are insightful, funny, and touching. The settings are very avant garde using graphic notation and including some aleatoric sections.

Text

Suns, moons, and gods
roam across azure skies.
They’re much more real on T. V.

The beautiful songbird
flies through the endless sky.
Death to Chevrolet.

When the sun strokes her
at the precise angle.
God appears and smiles.