Gabriela Lena Frank
Text by J. Drew Lanham
Dramaturgy by Gabriela Lena Frank
for baritone and chamber orchestra
Full Score
From the G. Schirmer Rental Library
Date of Printing________________
G. Schirmer, Inc. New York, NY
Text by J. Drew Lanham
Dramaturgy by Gabriela Lena Frank
for baritone and chamber orchestra
For The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitsky
Commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation, Library of Congress and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra with support from Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting
First performed on January 30, 2026 at the Ordway Concert Hall, Saint Paul, Minnesota by Federico de Michelis (baritone) and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Mei-Ann Chen.
2 Flutes (2nd doubling Piccolo)
2 Oboes
2 Clarinets in Bb (2nd doubling Bass Clarinet)
2 Bassoons
2 Horns in F
Percussion (2 players)
Timpani (3 Drums), Marimba, Xylophone, Tam-tam, Suspended Cymbal, Crash Cymbal, Triangle
Harp
Baritone Voice
Strings
Transposing Score
duration circa 17 minutes
Program Note:
A few years ago, I chanced to read an essay by ornithologist and poet J. Drew Lanham in Audubon Magazine titled What Do We Do About John James Audubon? In it, Drew speaks eloquently and personally about the racist legacy of the founding father of American birding who “soared on the wings of white privilege.” The essay struck a chord in me even as I’m not Black nor a birder and only occasionally a poet. I’m a multi-racial Latina, a composer who grapples with the complicated legacies of not just classical music but my own personal heritage.
We all live with the consequences of entangled histories. Our ancestors made choices that made our lives remarkable but also complicit with bloodshed.
These are topics that still need to be reckoned with.
It has been an honor for me to create this four movement song cycle for baritone and chamber orchestra with Drew, inspired by his essay as well as his poetic and fictional work.
For Mei-Ann Chen and Federico de Michelis
Gabriela Lena Frank
I. Two Men
This is a story of two men.
One a hero, a privileged citizen. The other a beast of burden, claimed at the auction block. Two men…
Two men…
One, John James Audubon, the father of feather obsession. He desires to kill and paint every bird in the name of discovery. This is how extinction begins.
The other man, nameless and searching for family lost, he watches birds above, wild, free.
Chains rattling about his feet, he wonders…
The nameless man, he wonders: Could that be me?
II. In the Bayou
Two men… They meet.
The men meet in a dismal dim Bayou.
An owl bawls for night to descend.
One passing White, the other without question Black. The two men share words sitting in the firelight’s gloam as cypress shadows loom.
John James holds a sack of dead birds.
The slave, with wife and children fled by dark, he speaks of hounds, of whips, of wounds, of a wife claimed by the master’s lust.
John James hears none of the lament. There are birds, (Birds!) birds to shoot, to pose, (Birds!) to paint!
But these Negroes! In his way! In his way!
III. A Dread Promise
And then John James, the son of a French sea captain and a Haitian Creole woman, passing behind sun-darkened face and aquiline nose, he recognizes the familial in the face of his Black brother, this runaway slave.
John James, this hateful, slave-owning, bird-watching god, gives a dread promise:
To claim his brother, the wife and children as his herd to capture, to shepherd, to return to bondage, to suffering, to plows, to whips, to chains.
The two men cannot move. The words lie between them still as back water slough.
Two men look up… A kite… A swallow-tailed kite!
IV. Kite Angel
An angel! A swallow-tailed angel!
A black and white raptor floats, it floats on clouds, wild and free, free as a soul can be.
The Kite Angel swoops. It swoops down from heaven.
A Barred Owl, it cries!
The cry hides the sound of the killing blade of the angel. The blade finds mortal home in heartless chest.
And John James, John James Audubon, the genius, the founding father, the miscegenated man, falls from flight.
Life leaks red as cardinal’s breast.
Where two men stood only one remains.
Two men. For both freedom now comes. One breathes, free as the birds.
The other lies dead.
Dead as the birds he loved.
Dead as the birds he painted.
J. Drew Lanham
J. Drew Lanham
Gabriela Lena Frank (2025)