Instrumentation soprano and piano
Vocal Range C4 to Bb5
Timing ca. 18′ in five songs
Composed 2026
Poems by Yusuf Saadi
Related Work This song cycle is an adaptation/reimagining of the larger work This Exact Shade of Moon for soprano and string quartet, originally commissioned by the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Music and funded by special friends of Laurier, in celebration of the Faculty’s 50th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the Penderecki String Quartet.
Programme Notes
Painting a February Sky
Love Sonnet for Light
If Van Gogh Worshipped the Moon
Reading Borges on the Moon
Flowers on Europa
This Exact Shade of Moon for soprano and piano is a setting of five poems by Canadian poet Yusuf Saadi, chosen from his debut collection Pluviophile. The moon has long been considered a symbol of emotion, of the waxing and waning of life cycles, of the subconscious, of reflection. Each poem references the moon in some way, and serves as a metaphor for an intimate relationship.
Painting a February Sky seeks to capture the moon with just the right mixture of colour and emotion. Love Sonnet for Light sings of vulnerability, of trying to capture something uncapturable, of light that takes refuge in a moon’s crater. In the dramatic and unsettled If Van Gogh Worshipped the Moon, the painter finds solace in his brother’s letters, as the madness of the full moon approaches. The Argentine tango-inspired Reading Borges on the Moon imagines a future where the Earth has burnt in fire and we have relocated to the moon, our Earth/Moon relationship now reversed. The cycle closes with Flowers on Europa, a world-standing-still moment that looks to the icy moon of Jupiter and beyond into the infinite.
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