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Long Range Forecast (2024)

for SAB choir and piano

Text: John Barton (b. 1957)
Duration: 4 minutes
Difficulty: 1/4

Commissioned by Vancouver Cansing Choir (Gerda Blok-Wilson, artistic director). First performed in Vancouver, BC in May 2025.

In 2023, I collaborated with the Victoria-based poet John Barton on a major choral cycle, Chosen Family, which adapted sonnets from his autobiographical collection Lost Family. While visiting Victoria for a performance of that work, we discussed his more recent sonnets, including “Long Range Forecast”, originally written for Maclean’s. Together, we walked the Ogden Point Breakwater referenced in the poem, a path which John walks several times a week.

In “Long Range Forecast”, John describes the reality of facing climate change, bearing witness to the changing world around us. The piece begins with a simple melody leading into a darker middle section which depicts the ongoing destruction. The music ends peacefully, with the hope that we can lead our world into a brighter future.

Click here to see the complete score.

The audio below is a live recording of the premiere performance by Vancouver Cansing Choir in May 2025.

Full Text

Walking into what lies ahead through fog
Along the breakwater, I sense its bent

Granite finger blindly beckon, joggers
As they breeze past, light-footed, confident

As I am not, the beacon at the end
Too faint, with its bloodshot light, to cut through

What may roll in next — the low-hanging stench
Of burnt inland trees, sudden heat, hail spewed

By atmospheric rivers, drought, snowmelt
While it lasts urging higher the levels

Of freighted seas — yet, somehow, I have built
In the stillborn haze of such upheaval

A day-to-day, years-long walking practice
The boots I resole worn thin by witness.

Text © John Barton, 2024. Used with permission.