Eyes Open

(text: Kate Chopin and Eleanor Aversa) for SATB choir, 3’00” (2008)

First Prize Winner, 2009 San Francisco Choral Artists New Voices Competition; premiere by SFCA.

The piece is based on a single line from Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel The Awakening, cut into syllables and looped in the manner of electronic music. As the piece progresses, these fragments coalesce until suddenly the entire message becomes clear.