Composed by Kim Farris-Manning, 2024-2025 (Victoria BC) for SATB choir + piano
Collaborator: Alex Dawson, poet
A new piece for Vox Humana on text by Alex Dawson. Premiering May 17 2025 at “of the Earth”, VH’s spring concert in Victoria BC. 

The natural world - its grandeur, beauty, and permanence - has been an inspiration for poets and musicians for centuries, but there is a new and different imperative to singing and writing about the earth as we watch the worldwide disruption of natural systems that seemed immutable. Our world is beautiful, yet fragile, and we are not just closely linked with it, but are truly of the earth - clay into which life has been breathed; the earth is our soul. This is a concert of music exploring our relationship with the earth, but despite all, ultimately optimistic in outlook: if we renew the earth, we renew ourselves, and our relationships with one another. Featured on this concert will be a new commission by Kim Farris-Manning, as well as Eric Esenvalds, Andrew Balfour, Marie Alice Conrad, Charles Stanford, and Laura Hawley.