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Any of Those Decembers

Lyric Fest commissioning and presenting organization

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg composer & conductor
Jeanne Minahan poet

Laura Ward piano
Ráyo Furuta flute

Daedalus String Quartet
Min-Young Kim violin
Matilda Kaul violin
Jessica Thompson viola
Tom Kraines cello

Rebecca Myers soprano
Devony Smith mezzo-soprano
Stephen Ng tenor
Steven Eddy baritone

Release Date: December 13, 2024
Catalog #: NV6684
Format: Digital
21st Century
Holiday
Vocal Music
Flute
String Quartet

Blending vocal and orchestral elements across several movements, cantatas are notoriously difficult to compose. Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg has accepted the challenge with ANY OF THOSE DECEMBERS, setting poems by Jeanne Minahan to music. The result is intimate, aesthetic, and wistful — a tender embrace of lyrics and sound. 

Scored for four solo singers with varying accompaniments, ANY OF THOSE DECEMBERS impresses on multiple fronts. But it isn’t due to the excellent source material alone: the master performers in Lyric Fest bring both the lyrics and the composition to life. A wonderful collaboration, in which the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts, Wenzelberg’s work is “a cantata to make memories sing.”

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Christmas Forecast, Poem Jeanne Minahan Jeanne Minahan 1:23
02 Listen, my love Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ng, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone; Ráyo Furuta, flute; Daedalus Quartet; Laura Ward, piano 7:05
03 Christmas Forecast Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Ráyo Furuta, flute, Daedalus Quartet, Laura Ward, piano 4:58
04 The Outside In, Poem Jeanne Minahan Jeanne Minahan 1:18
05 Winter: The Antidote, Poem Jeanne Minahan Jeanne Minahan 1:17
06 Wonder's Wonder (Lo, how a rose e're blooming), Poem Jeanne Minahan Jeanne Minahan 0:50
07 The Outside In Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ng, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone; Ráyo Furuta, flute; Daedalus Quartet; Laura Ward, piano 5:44
08 Listen, My Love II Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ng, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone 1:32
09 Winter: The Antidote Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ng, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone; Ráyo Furuta, flute; Daedalus Quartet, Laura Ward, piano 5:47
10 Wonder's Wonder (Lo, how a rose e're blooming) Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Ráyo Furuta, flute; Daedalus Quartet; Laura Ward, piano 4:59
11 The New York Train Arrives On Track Three, Poem Jeanne Minahan Jeanne Minahan 1:09
12 Any of Those Decembers, Poem Jeanne Minahan Jeanne Minahan 0:56
13 The New York Train Arrives On Track Three Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ng, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone; Ráyo Furuta, flute; Daedalus Quartet; Laura Ward, piano 8:52
14 Any Of Those Decembers Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, conductor; Rebecca Myers, soprano; Devony Smith, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Ng, tenor; Steven Eddy, baritone; Ráyo Furuta, flute; Daedalus Quartet; Laura Ward, piano 7:35

Recorded March 8 and December 14-15, 2024 at Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia PA, USA

Session Producer Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg
Session Engineer Loren Stata

Editing & Mixing Loren Stata, Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, Laura Ward (tracks 2-3, 7-10, 13-14)
Mastering Loren Stata, Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg, Laura Ward (tracks 2-3, 7-10, 13-14)

This recording is dedicated with love and utmost appreciation to Lisa and Gie Liem.

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Publicity Chelsea Kornago
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Lyric Fest

Organization

Lyric Fest has been hailed in the press as “An irresistible mix of high art and humane feeling... As entertaining as a well-managed party” (Broad Street Review). Founded in 2003 with the goal of celebrating and revitalizing the art song tradition, it is the only performing arts organization in the Mid-Atlantic region with a primary focus on song in all its varied expressions. 

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Laura Ward

Pianist

Laura Ward is pianist and Co-Artistic Director of Lyric Fest. As a distinguished collaborative pianist she is known for both her technical ability and vast knowledge of repertoire and styles. Concert engagements have taken her to Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Spoleto Festival (Italy) and the Colmar International Music Festival and Saint Denis Festival in France.

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Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg

composer, conductor

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg (b. 1999) is a composer, conductor, countertenor, and pianist. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by the Tonkünstler-Orchester (Austria), Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Lowell House Opera, Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra (Japan), Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (live on NPR’s From the Top), Noord Nederlands Orkest, Lyric Fest, Orchestra 2001, and the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, and in such venues as the Vienna Musikverein’s Golden Hall and Carnegie Hall.

In March 2022, Wenzelberg conducted the world premiere of his second opera (composer and librettist), NIGHTTOWN, commissioned by Lowell House Opera. The piece won the 2023 American Prize in Composition and a 2023 ASCAP Morton Gould Composition Award, and was critically acclaimed by the Boston Globe (for its gender-expansive vocal writing and dramaturgical treatment) and Schmopera, who wrote: “NIGHTTOWN is just an all-around masterpiece. I struggle to come up with the right words to describe how brilliant I think [the opera] is, and I struggled with this even after I had just finished watching the show. All I can say, is that I think this opera has an immense future in the opera house, and I cannot wait to see the life it is no doubt going to take.” 

Wenzelberg has also won an ASCAP Award for his first opera, The Sleeping Beauty, a new opera for family audiences (2014), whose world premiere cast featured several Metropolitan Opera singers, two BMI Composer Awards — for his orchestral work, Maelström, and his piano trio, Midnight Tides — and the First Prize and Audience Prize at the Grafenegg Festival’s Ink Still Wet program (Austria) for his orchestral composition, Heroic Dreamscape Fantasy.

For 2024–2025, Wenzelberg is a Conducting Fellow with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert in Hamburg, and will both accompany Barbara Hannigan and play and sing his own compositions in a recital at Casa Menotti with the Spoleto Festival (Italy), while Hannigan’s Assistant Conductor with Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He will also perform as the countertenor soloist in Messiah with the National Chorale at Lincoln Center, and guest conducts with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (Netherlands), Dutch National Opera Academy, and Noord Nederlands Orkest (in a program which features his own composition alongside works of Brahms, Strauss, and Mozart). Previous guest conducting highlights include with the Boston Pops, Tonkünstler-Orchester, members of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Bredeweg Festival Amsterdam (conducting Rossini’s L’occasione fa il ladro), Residentie Orkest (Netherlands), and Lyric Fest. Recent assistant conducting includes with Boston Lyric Opera (where he also covered the countertenor role in Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice), Atlanta Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Belgian National Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony (while he was also the countertenor soloist), and several Dutch orchestras, including the Rotterdam Philharmonic.

Formerly the Music Director of Harvard College Opera (where he conducted productions of Massenet’s Cendrillon and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte) and the Mozart Society Orchestra, Wenzelberg has participated in conducting masterclasses with the Tanglewood Music Center, Snape Maltings’ Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme with Marin Alsop, the Gstaad Festival Academy with Jaap van Zweden, the Ulster Orchestra with Jac van Steen, and the Grafenegg Festival, as well as in the Netherlands with Lorenzo Viotti, Antony Hermus, Anja Bihlmaier, Jun Märkl, and Clark Rundell. He was selected for the 2023 Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, attracting attention as a burgeoning conductor and subsequently accompanying Barbara Hannigan as part of a concert for Marina Mahler’s 80th birthday.

A 2021 Metropolitan Opera National Council District Winner, Wenzelberg has performed as a vocal soloist with/at the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, Atlanta Opera, American Bach Soloists, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Dawn Upshaw and Gil Kalish, the Columbus, Portland ME, and Phoenix Symphonies, Shakespeare in the Park, the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Carnegie Hall. He has previously appeared numerous times as a singer and actor on Sesame Street.

Piano credits include being a Senior Coach for the Aspen Music Festival and School’s 2024 production of Matthew Aucoin and Peter Sellars’ Music for New Bodies, playing continuo in the orchestra of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, performing the chamber music of Weinberg, Gál, and Klein in a concert with the Ziering-Conlon Recovered Voices Initiative, serving as répétiteur on opera productions from Rossini to Sondheim, and being chosen to perform as a collaborative pianist for German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the 2019 Harvard Honorary Degrees Dinner.

Wenzelberg is a graduate of the Dutch National Master’s in Orchestral Conducting, Harvard College, and Juilliard Pre-College, and sang as a child soloist and chorister at the Metropolitan Opera for eight seasons. He is a United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts.

Jeanne Minahan

librettist

Poet Jeanne Minahan collaborates frequently with composers, including GRAMMY® and Pulitzer-prize winning composer Jennifer Higdon, Rene Orth, Michael Djupstrom, Ya-Jhu Yang, and Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg. Minahan’s poems have been featured in over 50 performances throughout the United States and in France.

Discography includes Jennifer Higdon’s The Singing Rooms, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, recorded by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (TELARC, 2010); Michael Djupstrom’s Oars in Water, commissioned by Lake George Music Festival and Lyric Fest, on Brooklyn Art Song Society’s recording New Voices (Roven Records, 2015), and Rene Orth’s Weave Me a Name, commissioned by soprano Emily Albrink, on Force of Nature (Lexicon Classics, 2023). Commissioned by DC Vocal Arts and soprano Daniela Mack, Rene Orth set Minahan’s poem cycle, At First, Now, Always, for a spring 2024 premiere at the Kennedy Center. Her poems have been performed by Lyric Fest, BASS, the NY Choral Society, DC Vocal Arts, Yale Glee Club, Pennsylvania GirlChoir, Rhodes Master Singers, Kantorei, and other ensembles.

In addition to writing, offering readings and workshops, Minahan enjoys teaching, painting, and continuing to learn. She was selected to participate in a poetry masterclass at Tŷ Newydd, Wales, with Carol Ann Duffy, former poet laureate of England, and Gillian Clarke, national poet of Wales. Minahan graduated from Bucknell University and earned her M.A. as a Rotary International Graduate Fellow at the University College Cork, National University of Ireland, and her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College. Minahan teaches creative writing and literature at Curtis Institute of Music, where she holds the Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Chair in the Liberal Arts and is Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. 

Daedalus String Quartet

ensemble

THE DAEDALUS QUARTET Min-Young Kim and Matilda Kaul, violins, Jessica Thompson, viola Thomas Kraines, cello 

Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. Since winning the top prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2001, the Quartet has impressed critics and listeners alike with the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances taking place in many of the world’s leading musical venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC, and Boston’s Gardner Museum, major series in Canada, abroad at the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in leading venues in Japan. 

With a commitment to contemporary music, the ensemble has premiered music by Huck Hodge, Joan Tower, David Horne, Lawrence Dillon, and Fred Lerdahl, and collaborated with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists including pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Awadagin Pratt, Joyce Yang, and Benjamin Hochman; clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera, Ricardo Morales, Romie deGuise-Langlois, and Alexander Fiterstein; jazz bassist John Patitucci; and violists Roger Tapping, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, and Donald Weilerstein. 

The Daedalus Quartet has served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006, and in the same year, the quartet made its debut recording, music of Stravinsky, Sibelius, and Ravel, released by Bridge Records. The Quartet has been awarded Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award and Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award, which funded a three-year residency in Suffolk County, Long Island.

Ráyo Furuta

flute

Renowned as “The Rockstar of the Flute” by the Informador de Guadalajara in Mexico and recipient of the 2024 “Power of Innovation” prize, Mexican-Japanese American flutist Ráyo Furuta stands as a captivating artist and performer of global acclaim. At the remarkably young age of 25, Furuta was appointed as a cultural ambassador to the United States of America. Since then, his prestigious performances have included appearances with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, The United Nations, Lyric Fest, and the celebrated Mainly Mozart and Yellowbarn Music Festivals, among many others. 

Furuta’s dynamic presence extends to solo performances, frequently appearing as a concerto soloist specializing in contemporary concerti by Gabriela Lena Frank and Yuko Uebayashi. He serves as a Professor of Flute and Chamber Music at San Jose State University and has shared his expertise through master classes at esteemed institutions including The Juilliard School, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and many more. 

Additionally, he has served as a Visiting Professor of Flute at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was the hand-selected teaching assistant to the Emerson String Quartet — the only wind player in history to hold this title. As a recipient of the prestigious Staller Scholar and “40 under 40” distinguished alumni awards, Furuta holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University, where he was a pupil of Carol Wincenc and the Emerson String Quartet. 

Furuta is a Burkart Artist and exclusively performs on a handmade Lilian Burkart 9k gold flute.

Rebecca Myers

soprano

Soprano Rebecca Myers is a soloist, collaborator, recording artist, and creator specializing in repertoire spanning from the Medieval to scores written especially for her. In 2023, Myers was a featured soloist on the GRAMMY®-winning Navona Records album BORN, recorded with The Crossing and made her New World Symphony Debut under the baton of Patrick Dupre Quigley as soloist in Carmina Burana, and debuted with Verità Baroque for the European premiere of Philip Lasser’s The Mask in the Mirror at the historic Institute de France.

Myers’ 2023–2024 season includes notable contemporary music engagements with The Crossing and Lyric Fest, plus early and Baroque performances as Vagaus in Vivaldi’s rarely performed Juditha Triumphans with Tempesta di Mare, several solos and ensemble appearances with Seraphic Fire, TENET Vocal Artists, the CalPoly Bach Festival, and Ensemble Altera. Myers is the Artistic Director and a founding soprano in the genre-bending, cutting-edge vocal chamber ensemble Variant 6. The ensemble seeks to change perceptions of what a vocal ensemble can be by presenting virtuosic and obscure works from all eras of history in new and surprising ways. Myers has appeared on over 25 acclaimed commercial recordings with The Crossing, Variant 6, Seraphic Fire, Lyric Fest, and Lorelei Ensemble. She appears on two GRAMMY®-winning albums (best choral performance 2018 and 2022) and eight GRAMMY®-nominated albums. 

Devony Smith

mezzo-soprano

Recognized for her “sensual” and “strong” voice (New York Times), mezzo-soprano Devony Smith is a versatile performer with a wide-ranging repertoire in opera and concert music. Smith is a sought-after collaborator with composers, having premiered works by GRAMMY®-award winning composer Jennifer Higdon, Jake Landau, Eve Beglarian, and Luna Pearl Woolf. Most recently, Smith sang the role of the Designer in the world premiere of Woolf’s oratorio Number Our Days at the Perelman Performing Arts Center with the choir of Trinity Wall Street. Smith has a long relationship with Kate Soper’s work Here Be Sirens, which she has performed four different seasons, including an appearance at National Sawdust. Smith joined the Albany Symphony as a soloist for a concert of 5 world-premiere pieces at the EMPAC theater in Troy.

A champion of concert repertoire, Smith has performed as a featured recitalist with Caramoor Center for the Arts, Carnegie Hall City Wide, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and Songfest, where she was also a recipient of a Sorel Fellowship. She made her Carnegie Hall debut as the alto soloist in Dan Forrest’s Jubilate Deo and has also performed as the alto soloist in Vivaldi’s Gloria and Durante’s Magnificat at Carnegie Hall with MidAmerica Productions. Additionally, she participated in the prestigious Song Continues Workshop with Marilyn Horne, Renée Fleming, and Graham Johnson at Carnegie Hall. 

In the past few seasons, Smith made several operatic role debuts, including Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, the title role in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Sesto in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, and Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Stephen Ng

tenor

Heralded for his “powerfully expressive voice” (Washington Post), and “a superb singer… with a soaring voice in the extreme registers that could be simply described as amazing” (New York Concert Review), Stephen Ng is known as an opera, oratorio, recital, and new music performer. He has been featured as tenor soloist with Amsterdam’s De Nederlandse Opera, in the staged version of Stravinsky’s Threni, directed by renowned Peter Sellars. His portrayal of Evangelist in Bach’s Passions has received much acclaim, and he has performed as soloist with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, Washington Bach Consort, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, and Lucerne, Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals, working with conductors such as James Levine, Nicolas McGegan, Pierre Boulez, Paul Hillier, and Daniel Reuss.

Ng has premiered two operas: Jeffrey Ching’s Before Brabant for the Hong Kong Arts Festival, and Chuck Holdeman’s Young Meister Bach for the Bethlehem Bach Choir. He has also made his Carnegie Hall debut performing Argento’s To Be Sung Upon the Water. His album Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Vanished was released by Clear Note Publications. Of this, Journal of Singing writes “Ng, a tenor with an impressively eclectic resume, is simply superb in every respect. His voice is gorgeous and distinctive.” His second album, titled A Soft Florida Rain: Ng sings Juusela, was released in 2013.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Ng graduated with First Class Honour at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Subsequently, He received his Master of Music at New England Conservatory and Doctor of Music at Indiana University. From 2002–2010 he was Associate Professor at Florida’s Stetson University, and is currently Professor of Voice at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He has served as member of the artistic faculty at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany, music directing their opera productions La coronazione di Poppea and Die Zauberflöte. Ng has been awarded a sabbatical in Spring 2019, served as Musician-in-Residence at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Steven Eddy

baritone

An accomplished concert artist and Baroque music specialist, baritone Steven Eddy has appeared both as a soloist and as a professional choral singer with The Oratorio Society of New York, Seraphic Fire, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, Spire Chamber Ensemble, Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, American Classical Orchestra, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, Choral Arts Philadelphia, American Symphony Orchestra, Manhattan Concert Productions, Handel Choir of Baltimore, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, The Choralis Foundation, Columbia Pro Cantare, and Ensemble VIII.

Eddy has also received great praise as an interpreter of art song. He made his New York recital début in October 2015 as a winner of the 2015 Joy in Singing Debut Artist Award. Since then, he has appeared as a frequent guest artist with Brooklyn Art Song Society and also appeared with Philadelphia’s LyricFest in the world premiere of Daron Hagen’s song cycle The Art of Song. As a Marc & Eva Stern Fellow with SongFest at Colburn, he had the opportunity to collaborate on recitals and masterclasses with such luminaries as Graham Johnson, Rudolf Piernay, Jake Heggie, John Musto, and Sanford Sylvan. Prior to this, he was a Vocal Arts Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center in 2012 and 2013, where he performed and collaborated with Stephanie Blythe, Alan Smith, and Håkan Hagegård. During his studies at the University of Michigan, he worked closely with celebrated collaborative pianist Martin Katz on a wide variety of art song and opera projects.

The First Prize winner of the 2019 Oratorio Society of New York Competition and the 2015 Joy in Singing Debut Artist Award, Eddy also received prizes as a Regional Finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the Oratorio Society of New York’s Lyndon Woodside competition, Joy in Singing’s Positively Poulenc! Competition, the Howard County Arts Council Rising Star, and the University of Michigan Friends of Opera competitions. He was also the recipient of the Earl V. Moore Award in Music from the University of Michigan and has been a finalist in the Dallas Opera Guild and Connecticut Opera Guild competitions.

Eddy is currently an Adjunct Instructor of Voice at The College of New Jersey and Swarthmore College. He received his training at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, and New York University.

Notes

As a creator and collaborator alike, I think a lot about what music can say: how a note, phrase, feeling, or gesture can “speak” directly and viscerally to a listener. Reciprocally, I find that digesting a good poem means perceiving the music within spoken word; the ultimate song, for me, therefore celebrates a special symmetry between text and tone. When Lyric Fest commissioned a cantata setting of the holiday poems of Jeanne Minahan, I found myself profoundly resonant with her words. The human harmony in her writing spoke to me immediately, coaxing musical harmony in response. I also appreciated how her multisensory snapshots of childhood memories captured a quintessentially American experience — especially as I was at that time preparing to move abroad.

As the title suggests, I hope this piece offers a timeless meditation on nostalgia and how it informs who we are today. The New York Train Arrives on Track Three, Minahan’s moving celebration of holiday homecoming, was set first and stands as the core of the piece. I then composed straight through, ending with the contemplative final movement.

Throughout my composing, I kept wishing there was an articulation mark that could express giving a note an embrace, a holiday treat, or a cup of cheer. The love carried in Minahan’s poems forms the connective tissue of the cantata, and I wove in her collection’s epigraph — Listen, my love, when wind ferries more than snow — throughout the cantata.

Casting four solo singers allowed for a dramatic world to be built across the poems. Implicit characters and relationships emerged — siblings, parents and children — and together, the vocal quartet became a kind of Greek chorus. I used structures of a baroque cantata as the framework for the dramaturgy. In homage to composers like J.S. Bach, ANY OF THOSE DECEMBERS features a recitativo and arioso in “Winter: The Antidote,” a custom poem Minahan gifted me as an ode to our mutual adoration of hot chocolate. There is hymn-like a cappella choral writing in Listen, my love, and a chorale prelude on the Christmas hymn, Lo, how a rose e’er blooming (cited by Minahan as the inspiration for Wonder’s Wonder). Listen out for references to Handel’s Messiah: a flurrying texture at the beginning of Winter: The Antidote, which mimics scoring and voicing of the soprano annunciation recitative, and a direct D Major to B minor chord progression at the end of Any of Those Decembers (“We skated toward infinity…”), inspired by Behold, I tell you a mystery. I hope these connections allow this piece to bridge old and brand-new musical traditions, and to deliver a deeply-rooted, almost sacred mode of storytelling. 

The cantata ends with a couplet to cherish: “We skated toward infinity / there being nowhere else to go.” I set the whole movement as a journey toward these lines. Beginning with slow “bell-ringing” piano chords (then transformed as steps in soft snow, punctuated by crackling effects from the strings), the sonic world melts into a gently rocking figure-eight pattern. This pattern slowly accelerates, skating faster and faster until it inevitably traces the shape of infinity in the ear. 

I had the wonderful chance to compose this piece for good friends for whom I hold great warmth and admiration. Within our crew of collaborators: artistic directors Laura Ward (pianist) and Suzanne DuPlantis, singers Devony Smith, Steven Eddy, Rebecca Myers, Stephen Ng, flutist Ráyo Furuta, and the Daedalus Quartet. I am also forever thankful to my Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Aunt, who listened and reminisced alongside me through the process.

Here is a cantata to make memories sing, and hearts alongside: this December and all Decembers to come our way.

— Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg

Texts

Listen, my love, when wind ferries more than snow… (fragment)

December’s wind has whisked the branch I clip and carry to a vase. The grounded leaves toboggan hills. Inside, the woodstove ares. Already bare, the shoot bears winter in,

the gift of crimson berries bring to wall
and table. Still, how soon the letting go.
Red globes drop. I coax them into piles
as nor’easter blasts of cherry, sage, thyme, chestnut, plum, predict the kitchen’s weather. Carols gust, drift. Displaced, winterberries
dot tatted lace, that cloth, my only snow,
how small the carmine pearls, how vast, this grace.

We haul the outside in: tote of pine cones,
quartered oak, twigs snapped and bucketed
beside the hearth, sprigs ame from burning bush— before the re, we remove our shoes.
For scent or semblance, reversals charm (though absent voices chide: are we heating the outside?). We string the hemlocks and the yews with lights. And all our making—cookie cutter stars,
the Yule log cake—strange welcome to this night’s revelation. Word-twined sack, peddler-packed,
each of us unties. Everything. Every thing
brought in—spruce tree, the sleeve that cradles snow, the tune we sing. We’re here from somewhere else,
a world drawn near, we close our eyes to see.

– for BPW

What venom, curse,
braved at the schoolyard
or at the crest of a frozen hill? What gash of sled, skate,
or joke? You’d never tell,
but trudged home with it
like an ice chunk stuck
to your scarf. So much
to kick off inside—
your brother’s too big boots, socks heel-bunched and stiff, snowsuit, hard shell of frost. The house, strange, a light left on? But then, then,
that wafting of chocolate,
in the air like a fog
you want to drink, a feeling of birthdays, keys
that unlock carved boxes, huffs of breath you forgot
to breathe out once
you breathed in,
someone humming
in the kitchen,
chocolate,
the mug she poured for you already thawing your hand.

Winter wind threads needles at gaps
in scarves, mitts, socks; we stomp, oblivious. Four of us, our mother, wait.
The boys nd signs to pelt with snow.
My sister grabs my hood
when the light comes into view.
A brown bag for a case, the height
of him, the hug that heaves us,
father-high, a stratosphere,
the muf ing of all that can’t be said.
The drive along the river, ice
in its pockets, burrs on its hem, home.
The train whistles behind us,
echoes off Boathouse Row,
an almost hoot, an almost song.

(Lo, how a rose e’re blooming)

Wonder’s wonder outlives the gale. Winter’s song, like the tide, returns. After all that wind, blizzard: calm. Treasures we can claim—clamshell, frozen kelp, snow-crusted scallop crammed with sand—land.

We cradle the deep’s contraband. Your love, I cannot understand but hold in my hand, your hand.

Morning’s call inaudible, it beckoned like a bell,
a bird, a crackling,
a sudden wallop of snow. We doubled socks, hitched boots and hats, all made for it—

the blue that is between— nighttime and the dark,
the sneaking out,
any of those Decembers
with slings of snowballs,
and whistle tests for frost,
that shrugging off of gravity,
the one too many coats,
we tossed in heaps beside
the crusted edge of Lackey’s Pond. We skated toward infinity

there being nowhere else to go.