Wild Things
A harmonic meditation on the beauty of the natural world presented by the Denver Choir League
April 21, 2024
Kali Paguirigan, Artistic Director
Bitsy Salisbury, Managing Director
Ally Olson, piano
Danielle Good, speaker
Lucille Reilly, hammered dulcimer
Amy Shelley, percussion
Leena Waite, violin
Enion Pelta-Tiller, violin
Margaret Dyer Harris, viola
Jody Redhage-Ferber, cello
Sacred Water, Sacred Soil
Words & Music by Moira Smiley
What can we agree is sacred? What blesses us with vitality through no doing of our own? This secular hymn - excerpted from Smiley’s secular liturgy “The Song Among Us” - seeks to find and celebrate the things we can all agree are sacred and needed for human thriving.
Lyrics
Sacred water, sacred soil.
Sacred rest, sacred toil
Sacred bond between all beings
Sacred repair, sacred healing
Sacred is our humility
Sacred is our mystery
Sacred birth, sacred decay
Sacred night, sacred day
Sacred ancestors, sacred longing
Sacred sorrow, sacred belonging
Sacred is our humility
Sacred is our mystery
Earthly Light
Words and Music by Moira Smiley
A sonic picture of the moment just before a midsummer afternoon storm. The sky is very black, swollen with rain, and birds call and fly nervously in the trees with overturned leaves. This song was inspired by Smiley’s childhood on a Vermont farm.
Lyrics
The heat leans down over us out of the dark July sky.
The air that is bristling with lightning is pregnant and shy.
Rising, building, rushing with the heat of all earthly light.
Swelling with droplets of life for the soil that is dry.
Earth is so heavy with fruits and tall grasses sigh.
Rising, building, rushing with the heat of all earthly light.
Mourning Dove
Moira Smiley & Seamus Egan
Wild Geese/Throw the Window Open
Text by Wendell Berry
Music by Malcolm Dalglish
Lucille Reilly, Hammered Dulcimer
Amy Shelley, Percussion
These songs are part of a larger work called Hymnody of Earth, which features Dalglish’s original compositions using text by beloved Kentucky farmer/poet Wendell Berry. These secular hymns and poems reflect the composer’s and the poet’s deep appreciation for nature.
Lyrics
Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over,
We taste persimmon and wild grape,
Sharp, sweet of summer’s end.
In time’s maze over the fall fields,
We name names that went west from here,
Names that rest of graves.
We open persimmon seed
To find the tree that stands in promise,
Pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
Pass, and the sky closes.
Abandon, as in love or sleep,
Holds them to their way, clear,
In the ancient faith: What we need is here.
And we pray, not for new earth or heaven,
But to be quiet in heart and in eye clear.
What we need is here.
And we pray, not for new earth or heaven,
But to be quiet in heart and in eye clear.
What we need is here.
(continue……….)
(hammered dulcimer plays…)
Ee………..Ee………Ee……..
Ah……….Ah………Ah…….
We dee dee……..
Earth Song
Words and Music by Frank Ticheli
This beautiful composition has served as an inspiration to people of all ages since its release. A cry for peace in a world torn by war, this poignant a cappella setting of an original text is filled with striking dynamic contrasts.
Lyrics
Sing, Be, Live, See….
This dark stormy hour
The wind, it stirs.
The scorched earth
Cries out in vain:
O war and power,
You blind and blur.
The torn heart
Cries out in pain.
But music and singing
Have been my refuge,
And music and singing
Shall be my light
A light of song
Shining strong: Alleluia!
Through darkness, pain and strife,
I’ll Sing, Be, Live, See….
Peace. Peace.
Now is the Cool of the Day
Words and Music by Jean Ritchie, arranged by Moira Smiley
This piece echoes the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, and also Jean Ritchie's very contemporary message of responsibility and covenant with the earth, the divine and one another.
Lyrics
My love she said unto me,
“Do you like my garden so fair?
You may live in this garden
If you keep the grasses green
And I’ll return in the cool of the day.”
Now is the cool of the day.
Now is the cool of the day
Oh, this earth is a garden
The garden of my love,
And she walks in this garden
In the cool of the day.
My love she said unto me,
“Do you like my garden so pure?
You may live in this garden
If you keep my waters clean
And I’ll return in the cool of the day.”
Now is the cool of the day.
Now is the cool of the day
Oh, this earth is a garden
The garden of my love,
And she walks in this garden
In the cool of the day.
My love she said unto me,
“Do you like my pastures of green?
You may live in this garden
If you will feed my lambs
And I’ll return in the cool of the day.”
My love she said unto me,
“Do you like my garden so free?
You may live in this garden
If you keep my people free
And I’ll return in the cool of the day.”
Now is the cool of the day.
Now is the cool of the day
Oh, this earth is a garden
The garden of my love,
And she walks in this garden
In the cool of the day.
Silverlake
Moira Smiley
A song describing the wakefulness that comes in the early AM – as the mind wrestles with the questions of fate & divinity.
Great Trees
Song No. 13 from “Hymnody of Earth”
Words by Wendell Berry
Music by Malcolm Dalglish
String Arrangement by Moira Smiley
Moira writes, “I remember falling in love with Malcolm’s insanely beautiful ‘Great Trees’ – a setting of Wendell Berry’s words – when I was 13. His settings gave me my first sense of poetry as a living, spoken companion to our movements throughout a day – especially in those moments of quiet walking in quieter places.”
Lyrics
Slowly, slowly,
They return to the small woodland let alone
Great trees, out-spreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.
Patient as stars, they build in the air,
Tier after tier a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace,
Of song, a blessing on this place.
They stand in waiting all around,
Uprisings of their native ground,
Down-comings of the distant light,
They are the advent they await.
Receiving sun and giving shade.
Their life’s a benefaction made,
And is benediction said,
Over the living and the dead.
In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind and we are pleased
To walk on radiance amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised!
The Peace of Wild Things (World Premiere!)
Poem by Wendell Berry
Music by Jody Redhage Ferber
Commissioned for the Denver Choir League
When Kali initially spoke to Jody about writing a piece for Choir League, she had bits of this already going. It’s her first composition for choir, and we are privileged to be sharing its premiere with you today! “The Peace of Wild Things" celebrates nature's ability to refresh and restore the human mind. The speaker, full of despair and fear, finds a kind of "peace" among the "wild things" of the natural world, which—unlike humans—don't worry about whatever might happen next and instead live in the present.
Lyrics
When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
In his beauty on the water
And the great heron feeds, the great heron feeds
I come into the peace of the wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethoughts of grief
Come into the presence of still water, And I feel
And I feel above me the day blind stars waiting
With their light for a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free
I am free
Rotary Phone
Moira Smiley
A song about the sweetness of embracing change.
Haiku
Movement 4, Song 2 from The Song Among Us
Haiku by Kobayashi Issa, Translated by Robert Hass
Music by Moira Smiley
Haiku - excerpted from Smiley’s secular liturgy “The Song Among Us” - is a meditation on the fragile play between the suffering and pleasure of living encapsulated in this 18th century Japanese poem by Kobayashi Issa.
Lyrics
In this world
We walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers
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Artist Bios
Moira Smiley
Singer / Composer Moira Smiley has toured the world and recorded with Indie-pop favorites, Tuneyards, performing with them on all the late-night TV shows (Kimmel, Colbert, Conan O’Brien, UK’s Jools Holland, etc.) and recently to re-open David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center in NYC with Chris Thile, Hilary Hahn and Brad Mehldau. She began her singing career in Baroque and Medieval music, collaborating with Paul Hillier, Fretless Consort of Viols, Dufay Collective and Sinfonye, BBC Singers and New World Symphony. As a folksinger, she’s fronted the legendary Irish-American supergroup, Solas as well as the Lomax and Folklife Projects produced by Jayme Stone, and continues to lead her own vocal collaborations as VOCO and The Voice Is A Traveler.
As a composer, she’s premiered works alongside Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, Shara Nova, Rollo Dilworth, Reena Esmail and many others. Moira has been featured in TED conferences, on BBC Radio and TV, NPR, ABC Australia, and live at countless venues from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall to Walt Disney Concert Hall and Royal Festival Hall. She brings vivid, embodied singing to stages tiny and grand, atop glaciers or in cozy kitchens from Taiwan to Tasmania.
Moira’s 2018 solo album ‘Unzip The Horizon’ premiered at the prestigious Savannah Music Festival in 2018, and she published its companion choral Songbook in 2019. In February of 2021, she released her vocal album ‘In Our Voices’, featuring international VOCO collaborators. A new album of folksongs with string quartet, ‘The Rhizome Project’ will be released in 2024.
Lucille Reilly, hammered dulcimer
Choral music has always been close to the heart of National Hammered Dulcimer Champion Lucille Reilly (www.thedulcimerlady.com), a graduate of Westminster Choir College and Melodious Accord Composers Fellow under the tutelage of the renowned, late choral composer, Alice Parker.
Lucille has performed at The Academy of Music, Philadelphia; Arizona Folklore Preserve; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Ozark Folk Center, Mountain View, Arkansas; City Stages, Birmingham, Alabama; Denver Center for the Performing Arts; United Methodist Council of Bishops; Westminster Choir College; ArtCore, Casper, WY; The Philadelphia Folk Festival; South Dakota School of Mines and Technology; Original Dulcimer Players Club, Evart, Michigan; New Jersey State Council on the Arts; Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park; Winter Festival of Acoustic Music, Dallas, Texas; and numerous chamber-music series across the United States, including Abendmusik, Morristown, New Jersey; The Fountain Music Series, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Music at Port Charlotte (Florida) United Methodist Church; Music at Ascension, Frankfort, KY; and Music at Saint John’s Cathedral, Denver.
Lucille teaches students of all levels face-to-face at home, around the world via webcam, and through week-long “B&B” lessons for “long-distance” students desiring face-to-face instruction, all with touches of humor. She nurtures “right notes” by way of healthy movement with the bonus of resonant string sound.
The author of two best-selling instruction books for hammered dulcimer, three recordings and several works composed for choir with hammered dulcimer accompaniment, Lucille is also, surprisingly, six-time Autoharp Champion and the 2019 Inductee to the Autoharp Hall of Fame. A New Jersey native, Lucille lives in Aurora, Colorado with her husband, three hammered dulcimers, eight diatonic autoharps, yarn stash and one happily spoiled cat.
Margaret Dyer Harris, viola
Margaret Dyer Harris has crafted an eclectic career as a recording artist, entrepreneur, chamber musician, arts advocate, and educator. An artist on Grammy award winning records in multiple genres, Margaret was a founding member of A Far Cry, the Boston based conductorless string ensemble. She has performed and recorded with groups across a broad spectrum of music including, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Cyndi Lauper, The Metropolitan Opera, ECCO, Decoda, Yo-Yo Ma, Harry Connick Jr., Esperanza Spalding, John Legend, & Bryce Dessner. She currently holds the positions of Assistant Principal violist in the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, Principal Violist of the Boulder Philharmonic, and she is a member of the New York-based chamber orchestra, The Knights.
Enion Pelta-Tiller, violinist, singer
Violinist and singer, Enion Pelta-Tiller’s music is mythic. Her songs are a major arcana that help make meaning of the wild world around us. In them, you might meet a heroine at the dawn of the apocalypse, a talking robin, or an advice-giving river. You’ll taste the briny ocean and feel the windswept California coastline under your feet. Her six-string violin playing and singing both convince us that this world (and the people in it) are worthy of love and attention.
Pelta-Tiller co-founded the band Taarka with her husband David Tiller. Together, they are story spinners, melody-makers, world travelers, and survivors of a 1000-year flood in their Colorado home. She has also performed with Elephant Revival, Linda Ronstadt, Tim O’Brien, Ron Miles, and many more. She has composed music for dance and documentary film and has written arrangements for the Colorado Symphony. She’s been featured in the Boston Globe, Strings Magazine, NPR Tiny Desk, and TedX.
Leena Waite, Violin
Since arriving in Colorado in the fall of 2015, violinist Leena Waite has become a regular substitute with the Colorado Symphony, Opera Colorado and Colorado Ballet. She performs chamber music with local musicians through Front Range Chamber Players, Friends of Chamber Music’s museum and school concerts, and Highlands Ranch Mansion Chamber Series. Along with vocalist Kali Pagurigan, she is the co-founder of ReSound, a Denver based voice and string quartet project presenting accessible yet profound music in a variety of genres from mostly 20th century to present day composers. She plays frequently at Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church, as a soloist and in ensembles in a variety of styles - classical, folk and jazz - and as a guest with the Westminster choir. She also appears frequently with Boulder Chorale, Denver Choir League, Elus Vocal Ensemble, and the Ghost Ranch Chorale.
Leena received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Violin Performance (with a jazz minor) from Carnegie Mellon University, studying with Andres Cardenes. She then went on to earn a Masters of Music and Masters in Improvisation from the University of Michigan and studied with violinist Andrew Berofsky and jazz musicians Geri Allen, Ed Sarath, and Ellen Rowe. She also holds a Masters of Arts in Ministry from Drew Theological School, Madison, NJ.
Jody Redhage Ferber
Cellist and composer Jody Redhage Ferber’s creative music balances classical chamber music and jazz improvisation. Over the past 18 years of working as a professional cellist, composer, recording artist, and concert presenter, she has collaborated with musicians including Esperanza Spalding, Fred Hersch, Terri Lyne Carrington, Snarky Puppy, Sufjan Stevens, Neil Diamond and Jay-Z in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, the Barbican in London, Austin City Limits, Disney Hall, and Tokyo's Blue Note. She is a busy recording session cellist for an array of artists and can be heard on Sesame Street. Jody designs whimsical outdoor performances called EcoTones Concerts, braiding world-class musicians, audiences, and local public nature spaces, working to grow new audiences for live instrumental music and an ecosocial worldview of interrelatedness amongst humans, flora, and fauna. Jody lives in Nyack, NY with her husband, composer/arranger and trombonist Alan Ferber, and their sons Theo (10) and Elliott (5).