Dan Forrest's "Abide" beautifully expresses the flowing, vivid imagery in Jake Adam York's poetry whose lifetime body of work elegizes the martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Jake's "Abide" was published after his untimely death in 2012.
In the composer's own words:
"My setting hints at that hymn ['Abide with Me'] and seeks to evoke a sense of Americana on a warm late-summer evening. Inspired by York’s own direct manner of reading his own poetry, I chose to set most of his text in a rather homophonic and syllabic style, surrounding it with richer textures which envelop and embrace his own honest voice."
Abide (2016), Dan Forrest (Live)
Dallas Chamber Choir, "Walden: Nature Speaks" concert series
Jon L. Culpepper, Founding Artistic Director & Conductor
Jordan Peek, Collaborative Piano
Video: Tony Antoneo Hernandez
Audio: Bradley Prakope, Daniel Nix
Forgive me if I forget
with the birdsong and the day’s
last glow folding into the hands
of the trees, forgive me the few
syllables of the autumn crickets,
the year’s last firefly winking
like a penny in the shoulder’s weeds,
if I forget the hour, if I forget
the day as the evening star
pours out its whiskey over the gravel
and asphalt I’ve walked
for years alone, if I startle
when you put your hand in mine,
if I wonder how long your light
has taken to reach me here.
--Jake Adam York, 1972-2012