Category: Rock and/or Roll

Joni Mitchell wrote the quintessential depressing Christmas song, River. (Also check out this beautiful new rendition by Herbie Hancock and Corinne Bailey Rae.) But there’s always room for one more, right? This is a recording of “Silent Star” from a rehearsal with the Allegro String Quartet: MP3. Perhaps next Christmas will see a proper recording of the song.

Strange angels in the sky
interrupt this lonely night
singing peace on earth
but what’s that worth
when they sing it from the sky?

No angel will never know
what it’s like living below
they sing of birth
but that just means more hurt
as another woman cries

Born under a silent star
Live under a silent star
Die under a silent star,
a million miles away.

2,000 years passed since that night
and the only light that fills the sky
are rockets red glare
and bombs bursting in air
under the gaze of satellite
above this maze with restless eye.

Born under a silent star
Live under a silent star
Die under a silent star,
a million miles away.
A silent star, while all the angels sing:

Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis Deo.

On day two of our journey into the world of Allegro we arrive at another jazz tune. But this time it’s an intimate ballad with ripe harmonies and melodies that stretch to the point of breaking. “Have I Gone Too Far” was written while I was in grad school, compelled by my composition professors to “find my voice,” which was code for “write unnecessarily complex music that would be completely inaccessible to anyone outside our little club.”

I received my compositional indoctrination during the day, and played my guitar around town at night. In fact, this was when I first began writing music for guitar and string quartet, trying to find ways of composing music that were artful but also accessible. During these years of musical tension, I often wrote songs that explored the questions that kept turning in my mind. And the question in this case was, “Have I Gone Too Far?“