Music To Hear (2025)

for mezzo-soprano, electric guitar, & Percussion

~5 minutes

 

Program Notes

Text by William Shakespeare

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lovest thou that which thou receives not gladly,
Or else receives with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: ‘thou single wilt prove none.”

This song was commissioned and premiered by The Living Earth Show and Tanner Porter as a part of their “Legacies” project, premiering March 31, 2025.

Performances

January 30, 2026 | PIVOT Festival, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, CA. The Living Earth Show and Tanner Porter.

March 31, 2025 | KMFA Classical, Austin, TX. The Living Earth Show and Tanner Porter.