Got a men's chorus?

…and two cellos?

I’ve promoted this piece before, but since I’ve been under the weather for over a week now, consider this a stopgap post.

Sonnet 18 is my setting of Shakespeare’s (probably) most famous sonnet, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” As I’ve said before, the opening theme came to me literally as I was waking up in my dorm apartment 20 summers ago at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program. (I was the assistant director for instruction at the time.)

I scribbled down the gift of the line as I woke, then scurried out to become part of the chaos.

I approached our choral director, Dr. David Lee Johnson, who would be retiring that summer, if I could try writing something for chorus. He readily agreed. A couple of weeks later I handed him Sonnet 18, and he and the men’s chorus sang it in the Rotunda Concert.

Here’s the score, and here’s the video of the premiere:

I also made an SATB arrangement in the hopes it might find a wider audience.

Feel free to let me know if you’re doing either one.