Spain Tour: an Arrangement Premiere

     Ethan Sperry here. This tour was also the premiere of a new arrangement of mine that I've become kind of obsessed with. It's called "Aho" and it's a collaboration with my friend Ara Lee who is also a former member of the Portland State Chamber Choir. She wrote the words and music and I turned it into a choral piece. If you're in PDX you should definitely check out her album release party on November 22 at The Secret Society.

     People call me a composer these days, but I'm not. I'm an arranger. In my own opinion I am nothing without good source material. I spend much more time seeking out music to arrange than I spend actually creating the arrangements. Aho deals with how people turn to the divine in times of sorrow, need and desperation. We invoke holy spirits, nature or anything that comes to mind to give meaning when the loss of a friend or a loved one seems senseless or meaningless. We need a sense of meaning if we are going to be able to continue or keep going (Aho) ourselves. I have rarely found a piece music that is so cathartic to sing. This, in my opinion, is what good art does: it makes us experience our most powerful emotions in the absence of a real situation to cause them. It channels our most powerful emotions so that we can take ownership of them rather than the other way around. Hopefully then we are better prepared the next time we have to confront a senseless loss in our actual lives.

     My thanks as always to my singers. This should be a hard piece to sing with complete honesty and openness, but not for this group. The willingness to share the darkest parts of our souls with each other and our audiences I believe makes us much stronger people. Thank you for your vulnerability.