I have often reflected on my deep-seated need for (or perhaps even obsession with) the expressive power of music. My tastes and inclinations in this realm are wide-ranging; I've written quite a few songs, trying to explore technique and varying genres, in an attempt to somehow add my few drops to the vast sea of musical expression. These attempts are of course still raw and relatively untutored, but over time, I hope I'll come to some consistency of form, and I hope to study composition and keep working at what I love.

At left are a few song collections which are complete enough to consider "albums": GR2K is a semi-humorous "rap" album, poking fun at a certain popular music artist while talking a little about several themes that are important or interesting to me; Chansons Innocentes is a more formal folk-/classical-influenced body of work, with piano, cello, and voice as its sole instruments, while The Observatory is more electronic in nature. Finally, the "Happy Holidays" collection is made up of pieces for my friends who attended the Music Horizons program at the Eastman Community Music School. None of these are especially serious efforts, but I hope you can derive some entertainment from them.

Below are an assortment of pieces I have worked on relatively recently, classical and otherwise. Of course, quite apart from my own music, there are many artists whose music I enjoy, some of whom I have also featured at left. Please enjoy.

Mercury

A more "pop" song, guitar and vocals.

-- 
Silver drops; I couldn't sleep
Last night I found a tangled skein
of words that we'd spoken
all bundled together
to keep warm
to keep ourselves warm

Mercury is falling
The days go slowly in a ring

Recall the things I never said
the pine trees float on past my bed
Fractured remembrance of
one slight acquaintance
is lightly gone away

Mercury is falling
Poison me with thinking

Silver drops; I couldn't sleep
Last night I found a tangled skein of...
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Brackish

Another song in a more folk vein.

-- 
A finch, a lark, a gull
Quartz fields shiver at twilight
A little stream, unremarkable
And a frog swimming for dear life

The brackish water is a fine thing
The flood erases what is happening

My brow is a river
I must hear you say
"Please enter my humble abode
I have waited nigh three weeks to know"

I motioned to go
It dawned on me slowly
That you had no intention
of leaving again
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Para Entonces

A piece loosely based off the poem "Para Entonces" by Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, translated below. Written for the Parkside Youth Quartet.

-- 
I wish to die at the closing of day,
on the high seas, with my face toward the sky;
where this agony is but dream-like in seeming,
and my soul is a bird that once more takes flight.

I shall not listen, in my final moments,
now alone with the sky and the sea,
to other voices or sobbing pleas
than the majestic crash of the waves.

I will die when the sad light retires
its golden nets from the ever-green waves
and be like that sun which slowly expires;
luminous unto its grave.

I will die; and know, young one, ere he destroys you
Time will grant you the noble crown
and even then, Life will say: 'I am yours,'
although we know well her traitor's renown.
Listen
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Cold Morning

A setting of the poem "Cold Morning" by Eamon Grennan, performed at the Buffalo/Williamsville Poetry, Music, and Dance Celebration by Karen Williams, mezzo-soprano, David Stringham, piano, and Esther Chang, cello.

-- 
Through an accidental crack in the curtain 
I can see the eight o'clock light change from 
charcoal to a faint gassy blue, inventing things

in the morning that has a thick skin of ice on it 
as the water tank has, so nothing flows, all is bone, 
telling its tale of how hard the night had to be

for any heart caught out in it, just flesh and blood 
no match for the mindless chill that's settled in, 
a great stone bird, its wings stretched stiff

from the tip of Letter Hill to the cobbled bay, its gaze 
glacial, its hook-and-scrabble claws fast clamped 
on every window, its petrifying breath a cage

in which all the warmth we were is shivering.
Listen
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Spring

This is a piece for violin, clarinet, cello, and piano, based on the first stanza of "Primaveral" by Rubén Darío, translated by Salomón de la Selva.

-- 
Now is come the month of roses!
To the woods my verse has flown
Gathering fragrance and honey
From the blossoms newly blown.
Beloved, come to the forest,
The woodland shall be our shrine
Scented with the holy perfume
Of the laurel and the vine.
From tree-top to tree-top flitting
The birds greet you with sweet lay,
Finding joyance in your beauty
Fairer than the birth of day;
And the haughty oaks and hemlocks
Bend their leafy branches green
Forming rustling, regal arches
For the passage of a queen.
All is perfume, song and radiance;
Flowers open and birds sing:
O Beloved, 'tis the season
Of the Spring!
Listen (computer realization)
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Unsully

A paean to childhood.

My freezing car is parked outside
Her eye catches on the shine
Please smooth the crease to hide 
The lines of my serene illusion

I go on speaking, even if all of this
is what there is no need to say

She knows it intuitively
Primary colors
Free of guilt

We'll go to where the stars are strange
Where beauty is a simpler thing
When we were young and they were grown
or aged out of reckoning

Come watch the moon occlude the sun
For miles around and quietly
Ascend like spiders into sky
Up Jacob's Ladder, using the sparks for rungs

A child's portrait unsullied
Primary colors
Free of cares

You know, darling
Memories tarnish
Please just stay
Forever the same

(I wouldn't mind it)

Unsullied

We'll take a trip
And never return
A holiday photo
A drawing in sand

Primary colors
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E-mail: vokuro@adelphia.net
Last Modified: 2007/03/01