Today on the Pier (2019)

A song for medium-high voice and piano using text from an unnamed Walt Whitman poem from the “Calamus” cluster of poems in Leaves of Grass. This poem struck me as a beautiful moment in time captured by Whitman, who witnessed a very casual but meaningful display of love. Whitman often wrote of homoromantic love but this particular poem always struck me as gorgeous in its simplicity. The work was written as part of a celebration of the poet’s 200th birthday and was later performered at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in Huntington, New York.