In 2011, on a commission from the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, I composed Wanderings, a set of three songs for soprano, baritone, and piano based on the poems of Diane Gregory, a Brooklyn poet. This current work is an orchestration of “The Sky in Connemara,” the short, central song from Wanderings.

Gregory’s poem sparkles with vibrant, vivid imagery that inspired this shimmering, lyrical composition. Here is an excerpted version of the poem that serves as the text for the song:

Never free from clouds / never at rest / the sky in Connemara / tugs at us / to come close / puffs of tendrilled vapor / trail from hilltop to lough / to ocean / Gray sweeps in / to be foiled / by a patch of blue / a blaze of sun rays / sent to a rocky slope / sets mica and quartz / to sparkling. / Another streak / on a lake / gleams like a flashy fishtail. / At last we find rapture / when a rusty trawler / flames into orange.

— K.B.