Before I Sleep (2025)

for SATB Choir and Ensemble
(text by Robert Frost)

There are many experiences and images that inspired this piece, the first of course being the work’s text: Robert Frost’s wonderfully atmospheric portrayal of a still winter’s night in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Equally evocative were Caspar David Friedrich’s stunning paintings of winter landscapes, which are the only paintings I have ever seen that made me feel as sold as the landscapes they depict. Finally, an experience I had myself: snowshoeing on the Grand Mesa in Colorado among the snow-laden trees, and realizing upon stopping to rest that, other than myself and my family, the landscape surrounding me was completely silent.

Although I was raised in sunny Los Angeles, and am through-and-through a Southern Californian (confirmed by my more-or-less vitriolic reaction to the two relatively mild New York winters I endured for a graduate degree), I still have a healthy respect for the cold, and am always moved by the sight of the near-alien landscapes created in the depths of winter. It is these images and feelings that I sought to evoke in writing Before I Sleep, as an homage to these inhospitable and yet eerily beautiful landscapes.

Duration: 10 minutes

Before I Sleep was completed in April of 2025.