I LONG AND SEEK AFTER

Music by Jessica Meyer, Text by Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
Album released on New Focus Recordings March 22, 2024

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I long and seek after is my 21st century response to one of my favorite song cycles - Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben. While at the Aspen Music Festival many years ago, I was also an usher for many of the concerts, and it was there that I fell in love with Art Song and the Schumann cycle. As a woman in my early 20's, the text of that piece depicted all that I had come to expect from my future life, given what all the fairytales, Hollywood rom-coms, and Disney movies of my youth had told me: that one day I would meet a man who would sweep me off my feet, I would pledge myself to him, my whole life would be based around his life (and the birth of my future child or children), and that the first real pain will come when that man dies.

Now that I am in my 40's, it is clear to me (and to many other women) that this is just not so...and nor should it be. I made a choice in regard to my husband, our partnership, and our son, but many women might not want to make those exact choices. Also, we encounter pain in many different forms much earlier in our lives - but we may not have the voice, the place, or the means by which to speak about it, the ability to break various cycles of behavior in ourselves or others, or the people around us really ready to listen. Using Sappho's poetry (wonderfully translated by Anne Carson), I wanted to create a cycle that depicts women having the courage to live their life boldly, while growing older gracefully, assuredly, and proudly.

—Jessica Meyer, composer

Video single: I long and seek after, mvt. IV, “Crazy”

A note from the composer:

"Crazy" serves as the halfway point of my work I long and seek after. It is fitting that it comes midway through the piece, since what it expresses is usually a realization that folks come to understand mostly after they reach mid-life.

On the surface, this piece could be about our pining for that unrequited love – one that is so painful that we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

Digging a little deeper, the incessant repetition that it is often “those we treat well, are the ones who harm me” could be a signal that choosing this type of partner indeed is a clear pattern in our relationships.

Going even one step further: could this suffering indeed be something that we subconsciously recreate with every relationship we have until we figure out that we are instead the creators of our own reality?

This work takes a raw look at the thoughts we have that very well may be creating the unwanted situations that we cycle through over and over and over, all while expecting different results.

Video Single: I long and seek after, mvt. VI, “Someone will remember”

A note from the composer:

"Someone will remember" is the sixth movement of my work I long and seek after. It uses Anne Carson's translation of Sappho fragments as the 21st-century response to Schumann's famed song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben. While the final movement of his work signaled the end of a woman's hopes and dreams with the death of her husband, I instead wanted to depict women having the courage to live their lives boldly, while growing older gracefully, assuredly, and proudly.

Jessica Meyer, composer

With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), Jessica Meyer is an award-winning composer and violist whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Meyer’s compositions viscerally explore the wide palette of emotionally expressive colors available to each instrument while using traditional and extended techniques inspired by her varied experiences as a contemporary and period instrumentalist. Since embarking on her composition career at the age of 40, premieres have included performances by acclaimed vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth and Vox Clamantis, the St. Lawrence String Quartet as the composer-in-residence at Spoleto Festival USA, the American Brass Quintet, PUBLIQuartet, Sybarite 5, NOVUS NY of Trinity Wall Street, a work for A Far Cry commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Juilliard School for a project with the Historical Performance Program, and by the Lorelei Ensemble for a song cycle that received the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America. She has also received multiple commissioning awards from both Chamber Music America and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Her first Symphonic Band piece was commissioned and toured by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band (with a sold-out NY premiere in Carnegie Hall) and was a finalist for the William D. Revelli Composition Contest. Her orchestral works have been performed by the Phoenix, North Carolina, Charlotte, and Vermont Symphonies, the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, at Tanglewood in Seiji Ozawa Hall, and all around the country as part of Carnegie Hall’s nationwide Link Up Program. She was the winner of the 2nd Annual Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer’s Award to write a piece for the Bangor Symphony, and a winner of Chamber Music America’s Commissioning Program Award to write for the Argus Quartet. Recent premieres included works for the Dorian Wind Quintet, Hausmann Quartet, Hub New Music, the Portland Youth Philharmonic in collaboration with the female vocal ensemble In Mulieribus, and her viola concerto GAEA that she premiered alongside the Orchestra of the League of Composers at Miller Theatre in NYC. Upcoming premieres include works for the Bronx Arts Ensemble, the Brooklyn Art Song Society, the American Guild of Organists for their National 2024 Conference, and a new orchestral piece to be premiered by a consortium of orchestras across the United States. At home with many different styles of music, Jessica can regularly be seen as a soloist, premiering her chamber works, performing on Baroque viola, improvising with jazz musicians, or collaborating with other composer-performers. In 2023, she joined both the Viola and Chamber Music Faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.