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About the Composer
Jocelyn Hagen
JH Music (Jocelyn Hagen)
Phoenix
This fiery piece emphasizes the importance of resilience, working through pain to find beauty in rebirth.
SATB div. choir, cello, piano
This piece begins in the pain of rebirth and grief, but leads to an unexpected, sweet climax. Contrapuntal writing and a virtuosic cello part bring drama and excitement.
Hailing from the city of Karachi, Noor Unnahar is a pioneering creative voice associated with the international publication and social media industry with over 6 years of experience. She received her BFA from the esteemed institution of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2022, where she was the recipient of Dr. Salim Uz Zaman award for the best Final Research Paper for her undergrad research. Her work has been recognized globally and continues to grow across the continents. Her poetry has been translated into a number of languages, which include published translations of her debut collection Yesterday I Was the Moon (Penguin Random House, 2018) in Dutch (Gisteren Was Ik De Maan, MUSE, 2019) and Chinese (Pan Press, 2021). Her latest collection of poetry New Names for Lost Things was published in October 2021 by Andrews McMeel and continues to bring raving reviews from readers around the world. A number of poems from New Names for Lost Things have been translated into Albanian and published in PEN International (Kosovo) magazine (JUNE 2022).
Composer’s Notes
Phoenix sets a text assembled from two poems by Pakistani poet and artist Noor Unnahar, whose work explores resilience, vulnerability, and personal transformation. The text traces a journey through anger, grief, and survival, embracing the difficult truth that healing often begins with collapse. Like the mythical phoenix, the speaker must first burn before they can be reborn.
The music mirrors this transformation through a dramatic reversal of expectations. Rather than building toward a blazing conclusion, the work opens in fire: turbulent piano writing, a virtuosic cello part, contrapuntal choral textures, and flame-like melismatic passages create an atmosphere of intensity and unrest. As the text progresses, however, the flames gradually subside. The true climax arrives not in volume or spectacle, but in stillness.
Near the end of the work, the choir sings a quiet, a cappella setting of the words “so insanely beautiful,” revealing the emotional heart of the piece. In this moment, survival is no longer portrayed as struggle alone, but as a source of profound beauty and renewal. From this gentle climax, fragments of the opening material reemerge, transformed and rekindled, allowing the music itself to experience a kind of rebirth.
A powerful anthem of resilience, Phoenix celebrates the courage required to endure hardship and the unexpected beauty that can emerge from the ashes.
– Jocelyn Hagen
Text
it’s okay
if you’re burning
with anger
or sadness
or both
it is necessary
for you to collapse
so you can learn
how phoenixes are
reborn
when they burn
and rise again
from the ashes of
their existence
survival is not beautiful
it is fire, ache, and everything that hurts
combined
but the survivors know how
after survival
everything is so insanely beautiful
~ Noor Unnahar
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