We are proud to announce that Michael Gilbertson’s composition “Where the Words Go” has been selected as the winner of the 2013 Cincinnati Camerata Composition Contest. The composition’s lyrics were written by Kai Hoffman-Krull.
The composition was selected from among dozens of submissions and will be performed at the Cincinnati Camerata’s annual Marian concert in December 2014.
Bios and information about the work
“Where the Words Go” was written in collaboration with poet Kai Hoffman-Krull, a recent graduate of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. I think of this work as an abstract reflection on the season of Advent, and on how the words we encounter through prayer and familiar stories return us to a place of contemplation and waiting with each year.
—Michael Gilbertson
Lyrics
WHERE THE WORDS GO
Where do words go after they are spoken
from darkness the word became being
and that night three sleepers dreamed
sky was spoken and one envisioned
blue peeling open to blue while another
a sun clearing the rim of horizon
as light and light’s absence met in the meeting
while in the dome of another’s mind
formed a broken moon through broken clouds that broke
the darkness
from which the word became being
and that night three sleepers dreamed
and above them
the night held the sky that held the darkness
that held the silence
of words after they are spoken
Composer and Lyricist Bios
Michael Gilbertson, a native of Dubuque, Iowa, studied composition with Samuel Adler, John Corigliano, and Christopher Rouse at The Juilliard School, and at the Yale School of Music with Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Ezra Laderman and Christopher Theofanidis. Gilbertson’s works have been programmed by ensembles including The Juilliard Orchestra, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Symphony in C, the New England Philharmonic, the Cheyenne Symphony, the Yale Philharmonia, the Cedar Rapids Symphony, the Michigan Philharmonic, the Flint Symphony, the Rockford Symphony, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, Musica Sacra, and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.
Gilbertson’s music has earned five Morton Gould Awards from ASCAP, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a BMI Student Composer Award, and the 2007-08 Palmer-Dixon Prize, awarded by the Juilliard composition faculty for the best student work of the year. His piano trio Fold by Fold received the Israel Prize from the Society for New Music. Gilbertson’s music can be heard in the 2006 documentary Rehearsing a Dream, which was nominated for an Academy Award. His published music includes choral works with Boosey & Hawkes and G. Schirmer, and orchestral works with Theodore Presser.
Gilbertson is currently collaborating with playwright Caroline McGraw on an opera commissioned by the Washington National Opera, which will be premiered at The Kennedy Center as part of their American Opera Initiative in November, 2013. He has twice composed and conducted ballets for the New York Choreographic Institute, working with choreographers David Morse and Daniel Baker. His fifth ballet, a collaboration with choreographer Norbert De La Cruz, was premiered by the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in July, 2013. Gilbertson’s other upcoming projects include commissions for Sybarite5 and Red Cedar Chamber Music, for which Michael has served as Composer-in-Residence since 2011.
In 2009, Michael founded an annual music festival which brings young classical artists to Dubuque, Iowa for concerts and educational outreach. The festival is a fundraiser for the Northeast Iowa School of Music, where Michael has taught courses in composition and music history during their summer session since 2008. In the summer of 2013, he will join the faculty at The Walden School.
Visit him on the web at: http://michaelgilbertson.net.
To hear excerpts from Mr. Gilbertson’s compositions, visit his website Works area.
Kai Hoffman-Krull is a 2012 graduate of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Arts where he founded and edited the journal Letters (visual art & writing on matters of religion and spirituality) and ran the divinity school farm. He stated that he attributes much of his theology to compost! He now works in Seattle as the marketing and communications manager for Earthdance Organics, a sustainable landscape design company. You can read more about Mr. Hoffman-Krull online at LinkedIn here.
