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Programme Note

The Sweets of Evening (2006) was written for Dianne Berkun and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Having worked with this group of musicians many times before, I was honored to finally write them a piece. Having sung in a boy choir myself, I am fascinated and intimate with the changing nature of young voices, and I looked for a text that is itself transitory – here, depicting the movement between dusk and night. I have long been a great fan of Christopher Smart’s poetry, and particularly of Benjamin Britten’s setting of fragments from Jubilate Agno; my own setting here nods to Britten in its episodic nature and, I hope, generosity towards the singers. The Sweets of Evening lasts six and one half minutes.