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Alberta Songs (2022)

for soprano and guitar

Text: Deborah Faith Ramkhelawan (b. 1991), Harper Paranich (b. 1992) and Joanne Ellison (1952-2021)
Duration: 14 minutes
Difficulty: Hard

Commissioned by Coriolis Duo (Whitney Sloan & Marek Orszulik), with financial support from Alberta Music and the Government of Alberta. Premiered virtually as part of the 21st Century Guitar conference in March 2022.

Alberta Songs is a short song cycle celebrating the landscape of Alberta, from the city limits of Edmonton to the Rocky Mountains. With myself, Marek & Whitney all calling Edmonton home, we sought poets and poetry from within our own city to speak to both the urban and rural beauty of Alberta. The cycle begins with several excerpts from a longer poem, “In Praise of YEG”, by Deborah Faith Ramkhelawan. This geometric, open-form poem characterizes the Festival City through vivid imagery, and the music is at turns delicate, dance-like, and firm. The second song sets the poem “September Excursions to the Rockies” by Harper Paranich; the music and words are both cooling and calm, but ends unresolved at the violent impact of human development on the natural beauty of the mountains. The final song is a setting of “Glide Lines” by Joanne Ellison, highlighting the beauty of the midday prairie sun before heading down the ski slope. I would like to thank Deborah & Harper for their enthusiastic response to this project, and I am especially grateful to Joanne’s partner Ray Benton-Evans for allowing me the use of her poetry after her unfortunate passing in November 2021. I can only hope that this music honours their poetry and the beautiful landscape we all call home.

The audio below is a live recording of the premiere performance by Whitney Sloan and Marek Orszulik in March 2022.

Full Text

In Praise of YEG — Parts 1, 2, 4 & 5
Deborah Faith Ramkhelawan

Shouldered off from the coast,     tucked under
the chin of the Far North,              Alberta
is its own provincial psyche.

Tough, like a               spit-faced cowboy.
The image of man        in dominion.          
              wild west
                                  made current       by black tie
                                  ceaseless air         waves signal

Between Alberta towns
in their cowboy     boots and stetsons, and their
steel-toed boots   and hard hats
is a sister.            Edmonton is self-effacing
modern               efficient               well-educated
festival city in       inner communion with knit
together neighborhoods
Sprite / Scholar      
                      [Wanderer
She is not Klondike Kate or Emily,
but her grandmother               is the spirit of the river
when it rises          
                         and washes          out the little valley roads.

I have seen her turning to slip away into a nightdress of stars
shirred fresh with pink dusk and jagged hemline of glass
pyramids encased — ensconced in Glenora cliffs
when she stretches her fingertips    
touch pastures (and all
the farmers said Amen)      and her toes
dip swift the Henday highway
wound in wrangled anklet

© Deborah Faith Ramkhelawan, 2021. Used with permission.

—

September Excursions to the Rockies
Harper Paranich

We can pause for respite
among the cedars where
the mushrooms turn over the forest
in their own time, hair-like
tendrils cracking rocks.
We can stop a moment to
listen to the river rushing mad
and splitting mountains.
We can wait in awe as
the deer picks a path
so quiet through the forest, dreading
the day he sheds his antlers.
The trees breathe with us,
as the soil crumbles,
beneath our rubber treads.

The train’s wheels squeal
against the rush that gnaws
on the iron that keeps
the forest at bay. It jostles
us, as you reach down to
scratch the razor-burn that
stripped away the wildness.                         

© Harper Paranich, 2021. Used with permission.

—

Glide Lines
Joanne Ellison

This solstice prairie sun, mid-afternoon,
slants gently down through groves of aspens
silver-skinned, so lonely in their stand
of nakedness, their eyes of knotted black.
We steer our wooden skis in horizontal
tracks through poles of dark and alternating
sequences of light, our eyes like psychedelic
strobes that spin the world to rainbow shards.
So stop and turn toward the late-day sun
at play with shadows on the snow—
the picture steadies us, imprints itself
inside our skins, a latticework of light.

© Joanne Ellison, 2021. Used with permission.