Dream on a Crowded Train (2026)

for SATB divisi choir, a cappella

Dream on a Crowded Train
CA$3.50

Text: Chen Chen (b. 1989)
Duration: 7.5 minutes
Difficulty: 3/4

Commissioned by Vancouver Chamber Choir (Kari Turunen, artistic director). To be premiered in April 2026.

Dream on a Crowded Train was commissioned by Vancouver Chamber Choir as the culmination of my role as their 2025-26 Composer in Residence. For this commission, I selected a gorgeous and slightly off-kilter poem by American poet Chen Chen, where he recalls a perfect first date on the train ride home. Chen’s poetic language is always playful, casual, and steeped in queer joy, using irreverent turns of phrase and made-up words to capture a dreamlike feeling in the text. My setting of this poem is largely through-composed with a series of short, highly distinctive sections capturing the shifting moods and moments in the story – from the kinetic opening sprint to lush choral statements to the ecstatic climax describing their first kisses, which gradually dissolves into a dreamlike trance. I am grateful to Kari Turunen and to the singers of Vancouver Chamber Choir for their trust, their generous spirit, and their consummate musicianship in bringing this piece to life, alongside several other works over the past season.

Click here to see the complete score.

Live recording currently unavailable. MIDI available on request.

Full Text

Running late, I ran. Sprinted
five June-hot city blocks to meet you. Then we
walked (me breathless, sweaty) into a little café & right away
got so caught up talking
I didn't even think to order a drink
till much later you reminded me, Did you want to get
something to drink?
& I felt so grateful to you, that you would cease
being so interesting for a moment & give me
the chance to get up
because I was indeed very thirsty.

It was past closing time
when we left the café & wandered into the park—Let's
sit here, I said, & we sat there,
a bench, a place on this earth for
maybe five people at most
though everyone knows it's really just
for two people at a time, that's why benches were made
& when they are rained upon they struggle
to feel purposeful, looking more miserable
than a child who has suddenly dropped her ice cream
on the pavement. But how unmiserably
we kissed, how the lamplight
made everything the most
antidespondent green. The trees, the grass,
the benches, our bench—all greenly
awake, as we kissed & kissed. I'm dreaming,

yes, on the train ride home,
that our kiss, the last before we parted, has yet to end,
not entirely—that I'm carrying
the coffee-flavored ghost of that kiss on my lips, my tongue, while on
your train, you're carrying it, too.
Let's say it takes all night
for us to get home, the train having to make
every stop, & everyone forgetting to step off
the first,
even second times,
so there's all this looping back
& back, while we're still kissing that kiss, that green,
& June

Text from “Explodingly Yours” © Chen Chen, 2023.
Published by Ghost City Press. Used with permission.