Silver Lining

SILVER LINING was originally composed for solo flute and wind ensemble in 2018, commissioned by Peter Warshaw and a consortium of 25 flutists and conductors under the auspices of Worldwide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, Inc., in memory of Peter Warshaw’s wife, Lara Barnett. The current version, scored for solo flute and chamber ensemble, was created in 2026 for Thornton Edge, the new music ensemble at the University of Southern California, and will be premiered by that ensemble on March 4, 2026 with Donald Crockett, conductor, and Antonia Styczen-Leszczynska, soloist.

Silver Lining is cast in three movements. The first movement, “Game”, was inspired partly by my (then) teenage son’s love of video games. He acquainted me with lots of standard video game terms and characters, such as Side Quest (a deviation from the main game), Final Boss (the main antagonist, usually appearing at or near the end of the game), and Mini- Boss (a middle level boss, not as powerful as the Final Boss). The use of these references helped me to create an overall structure for the movement, beginning with a “Tutorial” in which the basic rhythmic motives are introduced as air or air-like sounds only. The movement progresses through various levels of play. In Level 1, adds pitch to the main motives; in Level 2 adds chords, and in Level 3, sound clusters. Along the way I insert transitional episodes (Side Quests) and more competitive episodes (Mini-Boss and Final Boss sections). The rapid interaction between the soloist and ensemble suggests a competition, a fun game, with no clear winner in the end.

The second movement, “To the Girl with the Flaxen Hair”, is a tribute to the memory of Lara Barnett, the late wife of the main commissioner of the concerto, and someone I also knew personally (Lara was a student in one of my classes back in the 1980s). The movement is partly inspired by American poet, Sara Teasdale’s “A Little While,” a poem that addresses the topic of death with a gentle, accepting tone, ultimately finding peace and serenity in its final lines. As the melody unfolds, the ensemble recalls the main motive from Debussy’s The Girl with the Flaxen Hair—the dedicatee’s favorite piece—floating it and blurring it like a passing dream.

The final movement, “Silver Lining”, is bright and joyous, moving alternately between ebullient dancelike energy and carefree lyricism. A sense of optimism is ever-present as the soloist and ensemble take turns sharing the spotlight.

– Frank Ticheli

Distance and Enchantment

Folklore is full of stories about people who suddenly disappear from home, never to return. Distance and Enchantment is a musical essay about this strikingly common occurrence. It takes the form of two meditations on traditional songs, which are played together without a break, amounting to a single movement of eleven minutes duration.

The first song, “The Dark-Eyed Gypsy”, from Northern Ireland, tells of a woman who, of her own volition, leaves her comfortable home to roam the unknown world with a band of gypsies; and the second, A ghaoil.lig dhachaigh gu m’mathair mi from South Uist, Scotland, tells of a girl who wanders a little too far from home on a dark night and is stolen away by the fairies.

– Judith Weir

First Work

First Work explores the mystery of origins through the distinctive voices of three contemporary poets. Rather than attempting to offer answers, First Work embraces the threshold between the known and the unknowable, setting texts that grapple with creation myths, the birth of language, and unexpected moments of transcendence.

The cycle opens with Pádraig Ó Tuama’s “Makebelieve,” a poem that recasts the biblical creation story as a cosmic shrug: “And on the first day / god made / something up.” Ó Tuama, an Irish poet and theologian, presents creation as an impulsive act of improvisation, unleashing a tumbling flood of images both sacred and profane. The movement’s long instrumental opening creates space for musical creation itself before the voice enters to guide us through Ó Tuama’s inventory of existence—from “sex and beasts and breaths and rabies” to “all our songs and made-up stories.”

The second movement sets Malachi Black’s enigmatic “The First Word,” which reimagines the Gospel of John’s opening—”In the beginning was the Word”— as an intimate moment between two people. Black, author of “Indirect Light” (2024) and “Storm Toward Morning” (2014), was born in Boston and raised in New Jersey, and his poetry often excavates meaning from moments of connection and loss. In contrast to the expansive first movement, I built this setting around a single, binding melody that unites voice and ensemble, breaking away only for the crucial italicized line: “not yes, or you, or hawk, or love; just look.” Here, I attempt to set the music, too, in italics, and the first word dissolves at the moment of recognition, suggesting that the most profound communications exist beyond language itself.

The final movement, Tracy K. Smith’s “The Universe as Primal Scream,” grounds transcendence in daily life as a neighbor’s children, “screaming like the Dawn of Man,” catalyze a roiling metaphysical meditation. Smith, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, imagines that perhaps these cries—at once piercing and life-affirming—might achieve “the magic decibel” to lift the building and “ride to glory / Like Elijah.” I hoped to match the poem’s fluid transformation between the conversational and quotidian to the prophetic and deeply charged.

My inspiration to create First Work was Jean Sibelius’s Luonnotar, a work very close to my heart that sets the creation myth from the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. My approach, however, is personal in its embrace of uncertainty and multiplicity. Where traditional creation narratives offer certain answers, these three poets explore the provisional, the mysterious, and the ongoing nature of creation itself.

First Work premiered at the 2025 Aspen Music Festival with soprano Melanie Spector and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble under Tim Weiss’s direction.

– Samuel Adams

Antonina Styczeń

Polish flutist Antonina Styczeń is an internationally active performer whose work bridges classical, jazz, and improvisatory idioms alongside contemporary music and film recording. She is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the USC Thornton School of Music, where she studies flute performance with Catherine Ransom Karoly of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and explores intersections of music, politics, and cultural identity.

A First Prize winner of the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition—where she also received the Special Prize for Best Performance of a New Work—she has earned top distinctions at major competitions throughout the United States and abroad. Her performances have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Deeply committed to contemporary repertoire, Antonina collaborates regularly with living composers on premieres and commissions. She is a Contemporary Ensemble Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the founding flutist of DuoKava, a chamber ensemble devoted to innovative cross-cultural programming.

Her artistic reach extends beyond the concert stage. She recently recorded for Cada Minuto Cuenta by Pedro Osuna, whose soundtrack was nominated for the 2025 Latin Grammy Award for Best Music for Visual Media. She also toured for two years with Persian pop icon Googoosh across North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.

Graycen Gardner

Graycen Gardner, soprano, is currently based in Los Angeles, where she is a professional singer specializing in classical, early music, new music, and session vocals. Her ability to deftly alternate between a full operatic vocal production and a light, shimmering sound enables her to sing a wide, wonderful variety of repertoire and musical styles. Graycen has been a rostered member of the Los Angeles Master Chorale since 2021, and in 2025 she performed with LAMC’s international touring production of Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien (Music To Accompany A Departure), staged by Peter Sellars. In 2025, she performed in the Stanford Live premiere and consequent performances of David Lang’s before and after nature. Graycen sang the role of Mina in Beth Morrison Projects’ 2026 workshop performance of Star Singer, a new opera by Juhi Bansal, and she is featured on the organization’s 20th-anniversary album, BMP: SONGBOOK. In 2024, she performed the soprano solos in LAMC’s Handel-Mozart Messiah at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and she performed with an octet of LAMC singers for the LA Phil’s Grammy Award-winning premiere of Revolución diamantina by Gabriela Ortiz. In 2024, she performed the role of Baby Doe in The Opera Buffs’ concert version of The Ballad of Baby Doe. In 2022, she was the soprano soloist in the LA Master Chorale’s Messiah Sing-Along at Disney Concert Hall, and in 2023 she sang the soprano solo in the LAMC’s premiere of Reena Esmail’s “Malhaar: A Requiem for Water.” In 2018, Graycen was a studio artist at Central City Opera, where she performed the role of Galatea in Acis and Galatea and received the Young Artist Award for Excellence. Graycen also specializes in film and television session vocals, and her recent credits include Wicked (2024), Wicked: For Good (2025), and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). Along with her profound love of performance, Graycen has a passion for teaching, and she provides private voice instruction to students in the greater Los Angeles area and beyond.
Media available at graycengardner.com.

Don Crockett

Donald Crockett is professor and chair of the composition department and director of Thornton Edge at the USC Thornton School of Music, and senior composer-in-residence with the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. He has received commissions from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Composer-in-Residence (1991-97), Kronos Quartet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hilliard Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and the California EAR Unit, among many others.

Recent projects include commissions from the Harvard Musical Association for violist Kate Vincent and Firebird Ensemble, the San Francisco-based chamber choir, Volti, for its 30th anniversary season, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Claremont Trio, and a chamber opera, The Face, based on a novella in verse by poet David St. John.

The recipient in 2013 of an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for outstanding artistic achievement, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, Donald Crockett has also received grants and prizes from the Barlow Endowment, Bogliasco Foundation, Copland Fund, Copland House, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA and many others.

His music is published by Keiser Classical and Doberman/Yppan and recorded on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM, innova, Laurel, New World, Orion and Pro Arte/Fanfare labels. Two all-Crockett recordings were released in 2011, on New World Records with Firebird Ensemble and on Albany Records with Xtet. Active as a conductor of new music, Crockett has presented many world, national and regional premieres with the Los Angeles-based new music ensemble Xtet, the USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble, and as a guest conductor with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Hilliard Ensemble, California EAR Unit, Firebird Ensemble and Ensemble X.

As conductor of the USC Thornton Symphony’s annual New Music for Orchestra concert, Donald Crockett has premiered well over a hundred orchestral works by outstanding Thornton student composers. He has also been very active over the years as a composer and conductor with the venerable and famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. His recordings as a conductor can be found on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM and New World labels.

Sung Text for First Work:

Makebelieve
Pádraig Ó Tuama
And on the first day
god made
something up.
Then everything came along:
seconds, sex and
beasts and breaths and rabies;
hunger, healing,
lust and lust’s rejections;
swarming things that swarm
inside the dirt;
girth and grind
and grit and shit and all shit’s functions;
rings inside the treetrunk
and branches broken by the snow;
pigs’ hearts and stars,
mystery, suspense and stingrays;
insects, blood
and interests and death;
eventually, us,
with all our viruses, laments and curiosities;
all our songs and made-up stories;
and our songs about the stories we’ve forgotten;
and all that we’ve forgotten we’ve forgotten;
and to hold it all together god made time
and those rhyming seasons
that display decay.
Copyright © 2019 Pádraig Ó Tuama

The First Word
Malachi Black
Her breath swung open like a broken shell:
and there, held in the blister of damp air
between her foreteeth and her tongue, it was—
no call; no song; no prayer; no jagged spell:
it was an emblem housed in sound, a palm
pressed from the ochre palette of her mouth
into the cave wall of his skull: it was
not yes, or you, or hawk, or love; just look,
and, when he did, the word dissolved.
Copyright © 2024 Malachi Black

The Universe as Primal Scream
Tracy K. Smith
5pm on the nose. They open their mouths
And it rolls out: high, shrill and metallic.
First the boy, then his sister. Occasionally,
They both let loose at once, and I think
Of putting on my shoes to go up and see
Whether it is merely an experiment
Their parents have been conducting
Upon the good crystal, which must surely
Lie shattered to dust on the floor.
Maybe the mother is still proud
Of the four pink lungs she nursed
To such might. Perhaps, if they hit
The magic decibel, the whole building
Will lift-off, and we’ll ride to glory
Like Elijah. If this is it—if this is what
Their cries are cocked toward—let the sky
Pass from blue, to red, to molten gold,
To black. Let the heaven we inherit approach.
Whether it is our dead in Old Testament robes,
Or a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space.
Whether it will bend down to greet us like a father,
Or swallow us like a furnace. I’m ready
To meet what refuses to let us keep anything
For long. What teases us with blessings,
Bends us with grief. Wizard, thief, the great
Wind rushing to knock our mirrors to the floor,
To sweep our short lives clean. How mean
Our racket seems beside it. My stereo on shuffle.
The neighbor chopping onions through a wall.
All of it just a hiccough against what may never
Come for us. And the kids upstairs still at it,
Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something
They have no name for has begun to insist
Upon being born.
Copyright © 2011 Tracy K. Smith