For score and parts, contact Jay directly

*MARCH 20 2020* (2020)

Song for soprano and piano. 4 minutes 25 seconds. In English, text by Julian Jaffe.

I am so grateful to my friend Hayley Maloney for calling this song into existence. She approached me, without ever having heard my music, about collaborating with her on the 2021 Cincinnati SongSLAM competition. I’m not sure why she trusted me with that, but I’m glad she did. She suggested her friend Julian Jaffe as a third collaborator for text. Julian sent me several of his poems, and this one immediately struck me with its high-drama, relatable depiction of desperation in the early pandemic. When I asked him for any musical requests, he said that he connects with through-composed music — fortunate, since that’s what I’d been writing. The resulting song was the beginning of a fruitful and — I hope — long collaboration between Hayley and me. One particularly delightful serendipity: I only came to know Grace, one of the song’s inhabitants, long after writing the song — and even then, I didn’t know it was the same Grace until someone told me.