Written for the Source Song Festival 2019, Blessing was premiered by mezzo Clara Osowski and pianist Mark Bilyeu as part of a panel discussion entitled "How Text Gets Paired with Song." Libby Larsen, who organized the project, also wrote a setting of the poem, with fascinatingly different results.

Blessing

Sorrow will come

May there also be kindness and grace

Easy silence in the place beyond words

and words to warm the silences

A channel that guards the passage

of your small and battered boat

then opens again, wide

2020 by Nodin Press,
Sitting in Lawn Chairs After a Complicated Day
used with permission by the author 

Written for the Source Song Festival 2019, Blessing was premiered by mezzo Clara Osowski and pianist Mark Bilyeu as part of a panel discussion entitled "How Text Gets Paired with Song” on August 7, 2019 in the Meisel Room of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN.

It's such a simple text and uplifting piece, but with the "pensive" expressive marking, do treat it with more gravity than a typical 3/4 waltz. Find a tempo that works for both pianist and singer - the singer gets more say in what is possible, but the pianist gets to control it with all the subdivisions, and the singer will want to slow down, but the pianist gets to drive this tempo. It's easy to go towards the downbeat, but the imagery of the piano says to me that the third beat's movement across the barline is really the important intention. Performing it at 110 instead of 128 is risky to slow down even more, but to me, that seems to give the piece more gravity. You'll find the right tempo for the singer's emotion - just trust your pianist and help them maintain it by not dragging. -CO

Carol Barnett’s music has been called audacious and engaging. Her varied catalog includes works for solo voice, piano, chorus, diverse chamber ensembles, orchestra, and wind ensemble.

She has received grants and fellowships from the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France (1991), the Inter-University Research Committee on Cyprus (1999), the Jerome Foundation (2002), and the McKnight Foundation (2005). In 2003 she was awarded the Nancy Van de Vate International Prize for Opera for her chamber opera, Snow, and her music theater work Meeting at Seneca Falls was featured at the 2006 Diversity Festival in Red Wing, MN. The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass, commissioned in 2006 by VocalEssence and written with Marisha Chamberlain, had its Carnegie Hall debut in February 2013, and has become a favorite across the country. Recent works include My People Are Rising, for Elektra Women’s Choir; Longing for Home, a song cycle for Source Song Festival; and Will’s Ladies, a Shakespeare cycle for mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.

Barnett is a charter member of the American Composers Forum and a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where she studied composition with Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler. She was composer-in-residence with the Dale Warland Singers from 1992 to 2001, and a member of the adjunct faculty at Augsburg College from 2000 to 2015.

Further information is available at www.carolbarnett.net

Marg Walker pursues her abiding interest in the human voice through poetry, creative nonfiction, and choral music. A singer herself, Marg has collaborated with choral artists to create programs of music and poetry, and her poems have appeared in numerous publications. Her first full-length collection, Sitting in Lawn Chairs After a Complicated Day, was published by Nodin Press in February 2020.