Dale Trumbore
Some October (from A Calendar of Light), 2021
Original score, Duration: 70 minutes
Dale Trumbore's new work A Calendar of Light is a twenty-six movement, 70-minute work with a libretto by contemporary poet Barbara Crooker. This new piece explores how our relationship to change is mirrored in our relationship to the changing seasons. These range from small changes, like the impact of our personal triumphs and failures on how we move forward, to more wide-ranging, urgent changes, like the effects of global warming. Crooker’s resonant questions (“Is it impossible to plant change?” “How can we let it all slip through our fingers?”) hold us accountable for changing our lives for the better, calling for reflection and action in recurring refrains and with several call-and-response movements that invite the audience to join in singing.
This cyclical piece takes the shape of a calendar year and features multiple starting points, allowing the piece to begin or end in the same month as the piece is performed. While a December performance might start with the January movements, for example, an April performance could start with May and conclude, full circle, back in April. Commissioned by The Esoterics and Artistic Director Eric Banks, this new work will premiere in Seattle, WA on December 9 & 10, 2023.
Dale leading a reading session at Tusen Takk with Jeff Cobb, Director of Music Programs, NMC, and the Canticum Novum choir. October 2021. Photo by Geoffrey Peckham.
ARTIST BIO
Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer whose music has been called "devastatingly beautiful" (The Washington Post) and praised for its "soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies deployed with finesse" (The New York Times). Trumbore's compositions have been performed widely in the U.S. and internationally by the Chicago Symphony's MusicNOW ensemble, Conspirare and the Miró Quartet, soprano Liv Redpath, Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Modesto Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, Phoenix Chorale, Tonality, and VocalEssence.
The recipient of ACDA’s inaugural Raymond W. Brock Competition for Professional Composers, an ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, Trumbore has also served as Composer in Residence for Choral Chameleon. She has written extensively about working through creative blocks and establishing a career in music in essays and in her first book, Staying Composed. Learn more about Trumbore’s music and writing at daletrumbore.com.
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