Year: 2025

Length: 7:15 minutes

Voicing: SATB (some div.), unaccompanied

Text: Chase Elodia

About the work:

The theme of coming-of-age brought up a deep array of emotions and memories for me. Newly in my thirties, I am well acquainted with the complexities of becoming an adult: ever-changing dynamics in friendships, romantic partnerships, and family relationships; navigating major life changes such as career, moving, loss, and birth; and an ongoing process of self-discovery and a fluctuating sense of identity. When presented with this theme, I knew I needed to portray the complexities and contradictions of coming-of-age as I experienced them.

Poet Chase Elodia and I worked closely together to create a narrative for the piece that explores how different relationships in our lives can make us feel seen and understood, or misunderstood, in the midst of coming of age, and how those relationships help us understand ourselves more fully. Each new age introduces a new character or event into the narrator’s life, and the music shifts accordingly, reflecting feelings of naivety, complexity, earnestness, and elation.

In my twenties, my emotions sometimes felt so all-encompassing that I did not know how I would survive them. I experienced some of the most thrilling and meaningful relationships of my life, as well as some of the darkest and most difficult moments during this period. Looking back, I feel a surprising sense of gratitude for even the hardest rejections, heartbreaks, and losses; I was shaped and strengthened by them. I feel an even deeper gratitude for the friends, family members, teachers, and therapists who helped me find myself during these years, and for myself, for continuing to stay the course. I hope this work can help others feel seen, or at least offer the reassurance that one day, they will feel understood.

Turning was commissioned by Young New Yorkers' Chorus and Alex Canovas, artistic director, for the 2025-26 Daniel Thompson Memorial Competition for Young Composers.

Text:

At 18 you
meet a friend
saying what you
wish your father
had said his
voice lands like
a steady hand
loosens the knots
you forgot you
had he asks
everything about nothing
of you suddenly
you can’t stop
crying a voice
without expectation
is a song

At 22 you
meet a teacher
saying what you
never had words
to express she
excavates the
yearnings concerns burning
questions of adolescence
with simple tools:
paper, ink, speech
she knows what
you mean to
say & says
it before you
an echoing voice
is a compass

At 25 you
are so earnest
right ear pressed
to a pillow
left ear filled
with strumming guitar
you sit up
write until your
hand is sore
think words make
a difference keep
pen to paper
play the song
again but don’t
learn its lesson

At 28 you
hear the voice
of grace catches
you by surprise
thought God visited
pews not sterile
rooms thought revelation
was delivered through
scripture not a
relative stranger she
gasses you up
talks you down
knows when to
say nothing knows
when to prod
welcomes your cold
calculating body as
it is –