Program notes from the April 2021 premiere with Cantorum Chamber Choir:
For You I Will Be an Island was written while in quarantine, when the greatest act of love that one person could show to another was to keep a healthy distance. This strange phenomenon stood in stark contrast to the tangible way I normally prefer to show love: with hugs, kisses, and closeness. Quarantine felt to me very similar to other rare times when distance means love, like when a relationship seems to have run its course, or when love isn’t returned in kind. When all that’s left to do is to keep a flame and wish them well from afar: “find me where love collides with letting go.” In the piece you’ll hear waves humming all the words left unsaid, the voices dividing with the widest intervals possible before coming back together for clusters, and long phrases that stretch for miles. Loneliness is inevitable, terrible, and even beautiful at times, and this piece hopefully evokes some of the collective loneliness we’ve all felt throughout the past year. Thank you to Steve Durtschi and Cantorum for premiering this piece, and please give an extra round of applause for the Alto IIs, bless them.

Commissioned by the Utah Valley University Chamber Choir, Dr. Reed Criddle, conducting.

When I was working on the words for this piece, I consulted with my friend Reverend Alex Reegan, who is a trans man and interfaith minister, to create a text that embodies the energy of the feminine divine that is present in any gender.

Commissioned by Voces Ad Opus for the Louisiana ACDA Conference 2021-2022

Commissioned by Dr. Jonathan Campbell for Graphite Publishing, 2022

Contact Jen directly for perusal score

Commissioned by the Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota, Dr. Garrett Lathe conducting. Additional lyrics by Jennifer Lucy Cook and Garrett Lathe were written for this arrangement with particular consideration for the pandemic, social unrest, and overall difficulty felt by the choral community and the world throughout the past few years.

Contact Jen directly for perusal scores for other voicings

Commissioned by Cantorum Chamber Choir, Steve Durtschi conducting

Commissioned by the Globe Theatre in London, this piece originally premiered by the Riverside Children’s Choir, a project to bring choral music to underprivileged communities and school in London, UK.