A new collaboration with poet Colin Browne, The River of Hellos and Goodbyes is a 'duet' for choir, a song of separation and re-connection in the era of globalization, inequality, corruption, and exploitation. Commissioned by Vancouver's musica intima, the music for this work was written before Colin wrote any of the words. After completing a word-less score, Colin and I listened to the ensemble do a read through of the work for him to begin conceptualizing the text. Once Colin finished, I began a process of setting the words onto the score, altering rhythms where necessary, but retaining all of the features of the music before any the text was conceived. The result is a piece of music that I would never had been able to write if I saw these words first. The process of setting words to pre-existing music was a true discovery, and a new form of creative collaboration that is equally informed by both our ideas and our work.

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