Instrumentation: 2222 / 2210 / 2 perc. / harp / pno / strings

Movements:  

I. The Night In Silence

II. July Midnight

III. Nightpiece
III. Beat! Beat! Drums!

IV. Slumber My Darling

Duration: 28 minutes 

Premiered by Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano and the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor on February 6, 2027.

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Program Notes:

From Dusk to Starry Night takes as its theme the many meanings and characteristics of “night”.  Originally for chamber orchestra and in four movements, this new full orchestra setting adds a fifth movement (the middle movement 'Nightpiece').  The first song, The Night in Silence, contains texts of Walt Whitman, references the clear starry night and, in the middle section, the rising moon.  The second song is a fast-moving scherzo of sorts, from a poem of Amy Lowell, referencing fireflies at midnight.  The third song, Nightpiece, presents James Joyce's modernist, spiritual landscape of night.  The fourth song, also from Whitman, alludes to the sounds of war, beating drums and bugles.  I thought of this as a kind of apocalyptic nighttime battle scene, full of calamity and intensity.  The final song, based on a text of Stephen Foster, emerges as a softly lyrical heart-felt lullaby which closes the cycle.  

--  Pierre Jalbert

© 2027 Pierre Jalbert, Another Starry Night