In The Night (2016) continued my still-evolving sense of an inclination towards strong modal thinking. This octatonic complex mode that one would find impossible to sing in its primary form has been a great a few day-challenge during the European American Musical Alliance summer program in Paris – how to make such a mode sound natural in an idiomatic way of writing for voices. In this García Lorca’s poem In The Night Of The Garden, where he masterfully describes the guitar “dance six gypsy girls”, my misunderstanding of the poem led me to a very mysterious, magical and rustic interpretation of this haunting poem. Just imagine the dark garden at deep night, where six gypsy girls dance with jasmine crowns on their heads and ritually “touching the sky” as their shadows grow long…

In the night of the garden
dressed in white
dance six gypsy girls.
In the night of the garden
they write on charred shadows
with teeth of mother of pearl.
And in the night of the garden,
with paper roses and jasmine crowns,
they touch the sky with purple
as their shadows grow long.