Tawnie Olson

Three Songs on Poems by Lorri Neilsen Glenn

Commissioned by the Canadian Art Song Project for soprano Magali Simard-Galdès, winner of the Jeunesses Musicales Maureen Forrester Tour. This song cycle is, in part, a meditation on what it means to be a mortal being who exists in time. The first and last movements each present a different take on looking back, and the cycle moves backward in time from evening to mid-day to dawn. Images from each poem are woven into the music: the first movement is full of sewing imagery, so in places the pianist imitates the ebb and flow of a sewing machine's ostinato. The playful second movement depicts icicles melting, opening with their unpredictable drips. In the third movement, cloudsbloom.