Summer 2026
Summer 2026 was a gorgeous deep dive into art song. Why is it so moving? It’s a powerful tradition, such an intimate and conversational mode of making music and listening. What do we want to talk about now?
I was very lucky to find myself invited to premiere new songs at two wonderful programs. First was the inaugural class of songSPARKS, curated by Martha Guth and Erika Switzer of Sparks & Wiry Cries in collaboration with the Collaborative Piano Institute at the University of Michigan. Next was (art)SongLab, co-led by Alison d’Amato and Michael Park in Vancouver. Thanks and praise to the amazing faculty and participants at both programs. So much learning, so many beautiful sounds and ideas in the air.
Poet Susan Stewart's vivid reimagining of Psalm 6 provides the text for this song about the powerlessness of a mere mortal grappling with an all-powerful deity.
text: Susan Stewart
music: Karen Goldfeder
performers: Kyungeon Katy Lee, soprano; Yeeun Ji, piano
Why should you be angry, why these
burning words when I'm so low my bones
ache, my teeth ache, and mercy is your
power's proof? Who will sing your praises
from the grave? Who will think of you
when I am gone? All night, here in my bed,
I thrash in a sea of tears. Those are
my cries that you hear. Not my enemy's.
This setting of Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet "Pity me not because the light of day" explores the ordinary and incomprehensible experiences of love, loss, and longing.
text: Edna St. Vincent Millay
music: Karen Goldfeder
performers: Kyungeon Katy Lee, soprano; Yeeun Ji, piano
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Stitch by Stich was written in collaboration with Vancouver poet Natasha Boskiç. The text conjures a woman hypnotized by the repetitive sounds of her sewing machine into a reverie of longing. As soon as I read the poem I found myself humming Schubert's iconic Gretchen im Spinnrade. We welcomed the chance to bring Gretchen back to life as an older woman who has experienced love and loss and displacement and hardship and the relentlessness of daily life while still yearning for love. As the piece gathered momentum and found its way, my own memories and the imagined struggles of countless others wove themselves into Natasha's poetic (fe)malestrom.
text: Natasha Boskiç
music: Karen Goldfeder
performers: Lynne McMurtry, contralto; Alison d'Amato, piano
'Wait for me,' you said.
'I will come to kiss your skin,
to whisper the words,
to find your smile on the pillow.'
I wait while bells toll,
while light mixes with darkness,
while ships carve water.
I stitch my life together,
quilting across the fabric
-- the rivers of love.
Click-clack, clickety-clack!
Pocketa-pocketa, clickety-clack!
The needle keeps marching on,
humming, whirring, clanking, yearning,
filling the holes, pulling the threads,
longing to keep it together.
Click-clack, clickety-clack!
Thousands and thousands of steps,
in different cities,
men that have your face
and your hands,
hugging and waving goodbye.
Zipping up the pain,
breaking at the seams,
snip, snip of scissors
cutting through time.
A scrap onto a scrap,
and the hum of the sigh.
I wait while the steps slow down,
while the greys seep in,
while the bones start to ache, become fragile.
'Wait. Wait for me,'
-- a heartbeat in the silence of your shadow.
