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About the Composer
Timothy C. Takach
Timothy C. Takach Publications
Winter Walk (SATB)
A cappella gem, sure to be an annual favorite for a winter concert.
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Winter Walk
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The Longest Nights
SATB a cappella
Included with purchase: “Insight and Personal Awareness” and “Performance Comparison” assessments for deeper singer engagement.
Well crafted, with a lovely harmonic palette, singers love this piece. Takach has written this with enough accessibility for singers to succeed but with enough musical depth for experienced groups to really pull the music off the page. In the second half the men use overtone singing to great effect while the women sing the beautifully haunting verse. This piece asks us to look within ourselves and see what is important, what should we hold onto throughout life’s many changes?
Composer’s Notes
I’ve always imagined the winter months as the bottom third of a circle, dipping lowest at the new year and then coming back up to find Spring. There was never any negativity or depression attached to that image, but I do think it’s neat to think about the act of journeying through Winter as a descent of sorts. We dig deep, we nestle ourselves in, we maintain until it’s safe to come out. The texts and music in this piece touch on that idea–that we have to endure, we have to stay strong through the turning of the year. The images of hibernation and metamorphosis come to mind as well–will we be the same person on the other side? Or do we grow? Do we change?
In 2014 Brian Newhouse sent me a piece he had written, and I asked if he would be willing to take two lines from that piece and expand it into a poem for this cycle. He agreed and came up with the wonderful poem “Winter Walk.” I imagine this poem falling in the middle of the season, at the peak (or the bottom of my imagined circle, as I mentioned above) of the journey through the darkness. And here we have the main idea of the cycle. The cold and quiet offer us a chance to look inside of ourselves. And if we listen and decide to follow our hearts, who will we be when we come through on the other side? I imagine that we come out as better, stronger versions of ourselves.
– Timothy C. Takach
Text
The longest night
The brightest moon
The sharpest sting of cold
The barest branch
The hardest earth
My breath the only cloud
And I am out walking to ask the winter moon:
Who will I be when the spring rains come?
The air so still
Smoke rising straight
The snowbanks sleep so deep
The quiet star
The silent night
A lone bird wakes and sings
And I am out walking to hear my heart,
And I am out walking to hear my heart.
– Brian Newhouse (commissioned for this piece)
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