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About the Composer

Joan Szymko

Joan Szymko is widely regarded as an outstanding composer of choral music in America today. With a catalog of over 100 choral works in print, her music is sung regularly at choral festivals and competitions across North America and abroad and for nearly two decades has been heard on stage or in sessions at every...

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Joan Szymko Music

Water Women

Name: Water Women
SKU: JS-079
Availability: InStock

Joan Szymko

Treble voices alternate between powerful unison, harmonized rhythmic unison and coordinated polyphony.

fall, secular, spring, summer

Difficulty: 4

JS-079

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SSAA, piano

The opening theme suggests a “rocking” feeling— not in a soothing way, as in rocking the cradle, but angular, and unsettled. Throughout, the piano accompaniment supplies a watery undercurrent supporting treble voices that alternate between powerful unison, harmonized rhythmic unison and coordinated polyphony. The watery journey culminates in a somewhat altered version of the opening theme and a final unison statement of women’s “supernatural” powers.

Text

Water Women

We do not want to rock the boat,
you say, mistaking our new poised
for something safe.
We smile secretly at each other,

sharing the reality that for some time

we have not been in the boat.
We jumped or were pushed
or fell and some leaped overboard.
Our bodies form a freedom fleet,
our dolphin grace is power.
We learn and teach and as we go

each woman sings— each woman’s hands

are water wings.
Some of us have become

mermaids or Amazon whales
and are swimming for our lives.
Some of us do not know how to swim.
We walk on water.