Mono No Aware translates from the Japanese to “the pathos of things.” This is a study in fluid textures. Sometimes smooth, sometimes choppy, always in motion. Sounds and images both appear and disappear, emerge and fade. It is never the same river, and we are never the same listener. The only guarantee is that what begins will end.

Zachary Good, clarinet

1. I was born on a prairie, 2. I am here when the cities are gone, 3. Have you seen a red sunset, 4. Rivers cut a new path on flat lands, 5. I speak of new cities and new people

Sam Handley, bass-baritone
William Koehler, piano

This song cycle is dedicated to my dear wife, who taped the expansive poem “Prairie” to my PC in 2003. I hold Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) largely responsible for the music, which bears little resemblance to my earlier works. Sandburg’s evocative “Prairie,” which opens his second published poetry collection, Cornhuskers (1918), held me captive for a year while slowly selecting and setting several brief excerpts (reproduced here) to music. The Illinois born and raised Sandburg was a Pulitzer Prize recipient both for his poetry and his multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln; he was also a journalist, political activist, and a folk singer who accompanied himself on guitar.

My most frequently performed acoustic work, the Five Songs were most recently heard this spring in San Francisco at the Conservatory of Music’s annual “Hot Air Festival” and at the Center for New Music. The original version is beautifully performed by soprano Lynn Eustis and pianist Elvia Puccinelli on the CD, “Portraits” (Capstone, 2008), available in the Music Library; the score is accessible online in UCLA’s CMSC. This recent version for baritone voice and piano is being performed for the first time.—RF

1. I was born on the prairie
I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its
clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan. . . .
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise
or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I
rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart. . . .
O Prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise
or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water

2. I am here when the cities are gone
I am here when the cities are gone
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

3. Have you seen a red sunset
Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night
stars, the Wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the
running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling
crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?

4. Rivers cut a path on flat lands
Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
The mountains stand up.
The salt oceans press in
And push on the coast lines.
The sun, the wind, bring rain
And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
A love-letter pledge to come again.

5. I speak of new cities and new people
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
only an ocean of tomorrows,
a sky of tomorrows.
I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
at sundown:
Tomorrow is a day.

Brian Penkrot, guitar
Mark Snyder, theremin

Calena was my first prom date and summer school math partner. She was such a beautiful and kind person that I always felt so relaxed around. I created this piece for her. It made me happy to think of the times we shared growing up and of driving Holmes by her house a thousand times a day so he could “accidentally” meet her and ask her out. When she passed away in November of 2011, I posted our prom picture on FB and her Dad commented on it: “Calena’s cancer was rare and aggressive. She went to the hospital the day of the Mineral Earthquake (Aug 23) here in VA. There is no known therapy (chemo or radiation) proven for NUT Midline Carcinoma and only about 50 cases have been documented. She was so brave to the end and passed without pain; just like she was running a marathon or playing soccer. I love her so much and will miss her always.” Calena’s Dad

Mark Snyder, accordion

Sam Handley, bass-baritone
David Maki, piano

1. Milwaukee, 2. Fort Wolters, 3. The Dance, 4. Winter Clothes, 5. The Manual, 6. Fort Meade, 7. Somewhere in Belgium, 8. The Last Letter

“Letters From Norman” is a set of eight songs using text from Norman Maki’s letters to his mother,\ Anna, during World War II. My Uncle Norman was drafted into the U.S. Army in July of 1944, just after he graduated from Ishpeming High School in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Between July 1944 and January 1945, my Uncle Norman wrote more than 30 letters to my grandmother, Anna. He wrote his last letter on January 16, 1945 on his 19th birthday, just four days before he was killed in action during the Battle of the Bulge near Vielsalm, Belgium. The letters were saved in a satchel all these years and as the 80th anniversary of the Battle approached in 2024, I began the process of scanning, transcribing, and cataloging the letters with the goal of composing a song cycle.

I selected and lightly edited excerpts from individual letters in a roughly chronological order, featuring different locations and tone of voice. Of course, the letters were never written to be set to music, so the challenge to me was to set the text clearly while illuminating the language through music. The harmony leans towards tonality, the vocal lines vary from lyric to prosaic, and the rhythms are often irregular, in order to accommodate the cadence of informal prose. As I read and reread the letters, I felt as if I got to know the uncle I never met and I hope that you, the listener, will get to know Norman just a little bit, too.

I’d like to thank Sam Handley for eagerly taking on the challenge of bringing this deeply personal project to life for tonight’s premiere performance. — DJM

Brian Penkrot is an American composer from Chicago. He teaches composition and theory at Northern Illinois University. Brian’s music has been performed at festivals and institutions in the US, Europe, and Asia. He has attended numerous festivals and conferences, including June in Buffalo, soundSCAPE, and the N.E.O.N. festival. Ensembles including ICE, JACK Quartet, ECCE, and Enid Trio have performed his works. Brian’s background also includes theater and dance. He has performed and written countless productions, including The Roof is on Fiddler and SpaceFuture. Brian has performed in many Chicago’s theaters and trained at the Second City Conservatory, iO (formerly ImprovOlympic), the Annoyance Theater, Act One Studios, Gus Giordano Dance Studio, and the University of Wisconsin. Brian received his PhD from the University of Iowa. He is the treasurer for Ensemble Dal Niente and is the former business manager for Melos Music. More information can be found at www.brianpenkrot.com.

Zachary Good is a multifaceted clarinetist, chamber musician, composer and educator based in Chicago. He is the clarinetist of the sextet Eighth Blackbird, a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, and a founding co-artistic director and member of the eccentric performance collective Mocrep. He is a frequent guest with Music of the Baroque Chicago, Present Music Milwaukee, International Contemporary Ensemble and the puppet company Manual Cinema. As an improviser, he performs and records with the trio ZRL and the quintet Honestly Same, as well as regularly appearing on improvised music series throughout Chicago. His discography includes releases on Cedille Records, Moon Glyph Records, American Dreams Records, Carrier Records, No Index, Homeroom, Parlour Tapes+, ears&eyes and his own record label Add Dye Editions. 

As a composer, Zachary explores contrapuntal possibilities on the soprano clarinet with small–interval multiphonics (“close dyads” or double stops), creating the illusion of multiple clarinetists playing simultaneously. His music is quietly virtuosic, inspired by the intricacies of the clarinet and a love for Baroque nuance and form. As an arranger, Zachary’s Style Brisé project (2017–present) is an ongoing series of French Baroque harpsichord preludes arranged for bass clarinet, including preludes by Élisabeth de La Guerre, Louis and François Couperin, and Gaspard Le Roux. As a collaborator, Zachary enjoys working closely with composers to bring new work to life, having premiered over 150 compositions to date. While a fellow and regular member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 2014–2016, he developed the Orchestra’s New Music Workshop, which continues today as the orchestra’s semi-annual Call for Scores.

He serves as the visiting assistant professor of clarinet at NIU, instructor of clarinet at Harper College, and a woodwind chamber music coach with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. Alongside the musicians of Eighth Blackbird, he was visiting instructor at the University of Richmond. In 2018, he collaborated with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the Youth Music Culture Guangdong Festival in Guangzhou, China as a teaching fellow, mentoring young musicians from around the world. Previously, he served as a middle school band director at the Chicago Waldorf School from 2015 to 2021. 

Zachary is a graduate of Northwestern University (DMA), Oberlin Conservatory and DePaul University. His teachers include Steve Cohen, Larry Combs, Richard Hawkins, Kathryn Montoya, Eric Nelson, Ron Samuels and Steve Williamson. He is the recipient of the 2021 Luminarts Classical Winds Fellowship. Zachary has participated in fellowships with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and the Aspen Contemporary Music program. Zachary is a D’Addario Woodwinds Artist.

Mark Snyder is a drummer, tubist, video artist, composer, engineer, producer & teacher living in Chicago. He has shared the stage with acts such as the Dave Matthews Band, the Roots, They Might be Giants & Drive by Truckers. Mark’s multimedia compositions have been described as “expansive, expressive, and extremely human.” His songs and compositions for theater, dance, orchestras, film & TV have been broadcasted and performed all over the world including CBS, PBS & ABC. As a producer, writer, engineer, and performer, his discography includes world, electroacoustic, pop, rock, classical, and country records. A two-time quarterfinalist for the Grammy Music Educator of the Year, Mark has been guiding his students to success in music for 30 years. His students’ accomplishments include an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award winner, a student’s capstone paper published in the journal Metamorphis, and three students taking second place at the Nashville Audio Engineering Society Mix Competition.

David Maki (b. 1966) earned his degrees in Composition at Northern Illinois University (B.M.), the University of Iowa (M.M.), and the University of Michigan (D.M.A.). Maki’s works have been performed widely at regional, national, and international venues. His music has been described as “fresh and unusual” (All Music Guide), “vivid, introspective” (American Record Guide), and “meditative and beautiful” (Fanfare). Recordings of his compositions can be found on the Albany, Avid Sound, Navona, and Neuma labels. He has substantial experience as a pianist and collaborative artist performing a variety of genres including classical, jazz, and new music.

Maki enjoys finding inspiration from nature, literature, arts, design, and a wide variety of music in order to compose multilayered works that speak clearly. He also seeks to employ a harmonic language that varies from lushly tonal to jaggedly chromatic, within transparent formal structures.

Dr. Maki is Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory and Composition at Northern Illinois University.

William Koehler was a member of NIU’s piano faculty from 1985 to 2017. He continues to be active as a performer of chamber music and contemporary music and as an amateur researcher of eighteenth-century Czech keyboard music.

Sam Handley, bass-baritone, has been praised for “his rich, burnished” voice and the “genuine emotional depth of his characterizations.” He has performed more than a dozen roles at Lyric Opera of Chicago (where he was also a member of the Ryan Opera Center) including Hans Folz in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Quince in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tom in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. Handley made his Asian debut as Basilio in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at the National Centre for Performing Arts (Beijing) under the baton of Lorin Maazel, with whom he had previously performed Talpa and Betto in Il Trittico and Colline in La Boheme. On the symphonic stage, his deep repertoire encircles masterworks of Handel, Haydn, Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Verdi and Mozart, in whose Requiem Handley has been described as “striking in the tuba mirum.”

Sam joined the roster of The Metropolitan Opera in 2017 for Der Rosenkavalier. Further opera credits include Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore (Tiroler Festival, Erl, Austria), Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Lyric Opera of Chicago for Fellow Travelers, NCPA (Bejing) to sing Konrad Nachtigall in Die Meistersinger, a role Handley also performed with San Francisco Opera plus Alberich in The Essential Ring with the Lexington Symphony and Symphony New Hampshire. He sang Sprecher in Opera Colorado’s production of Die Zauberflöte, Basilio with the Atlanta Opera and European (and role) debut as Escamillo in a new production of Carmen with Theater Aachen. Early career highlights include Leporello in Don Giovanni with the Ryan Opera Center, Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola with the Merola Opera Program, the title role of Don Pasquale on tour with the Santa Fe Opera, Mr. Emerson in Nelson’s A Room with a View (DVD by Newport classics), Sancho in Telemann’s Don Quichotte and Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea with Houston’s Mercury Baroque (KUHF records), Bottom in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Caspar in Weber’s Der Freischütz, Jaggers in Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Fire, the King in Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, Dikoj in Janácek’s Katya Kabanova and Dr. Miracle in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

Sam has performed the national anthem at Soldier Field for the Chicago Bears and has performed with Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) for Waters’ opera Ça Ira.

A fervent proponent of contemporary composers, Sam has delivered several world premieres, including Wlad Marhulets’ The Property with Chicago’s Lyric Unlimited, and the music of Scott Gendel and Dan Black with the Madison Contemporary Orchestra. He has been a guest artist with the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst at both Severance and Carnegie Halls, Houston Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra with Leonard Slatkin and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia with James Conlon. Among his several recordings, Argento’s Casanova’s Homecoming is available through Newport Classics and the DVD of his collaboration with Peter Schickele for P.D.Q. Bach in Houston: We Have a Problem is available from Acorn Media. 

Handley has long loved sharing his experience and knowledge of the art of singing and was a teaching fellow during both his master’s and doctoral studies. He has taught at UW-Platteville, Lee College, San Jacinto College, North Park University, Madison Summer Music Clinic, and Musica nelle Marche (Urbino, Italy) and is in demand as a master teacher, clinician, and adjudicator. Handley is Coordinator of the Voice Area at Northern Illinois University. He is Governor-Elect of the Central Region of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and executive and artistic director of Green Lake Festival of Music (GLFM).

As an administrator, Sam has overseen the growth of GLFM since 2020, including a new Children’s Chorus in collaboration with the local Boys and Girls Club, a reinstatement of the Choral Institute to promote and perform choral masterworks, a restructuring of the Chamber Music Institute, the first female composer-in-residence and the first composer-in-residence of color. Commitment to equity and access are core values for season themes such as 2023: Hemispheres Uniting and 2024: A Place for All. GLFM has established itself as a welcoming home for all music makers without charging admission for concerts. Instead, it relies primarily on free-will donations, sponsorships, grants, volunteer support, community involvement, and sound fiscal management.

Sam enjoys spending leisure time with his wife and daughter, especially while camping, hiking, sailing, cooking, fine dining, and keeping up with their Labrador Finzi!