Premiere: 1st March 2024 at Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
Conductor: Dr Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey
Poet & Narrator: Katrina Siddiqi-Davies
Oxford Millennium Orchestra
Commission by the Oxford Millennium Orchestra, 'Spring Migrations' was a collaboration between the Faculty of Music and Department of Biology. This piece began with Katrina Siddiqi-Davies's poem based on her DPhil research on the migration of Manx shearwaters and several keywords were highlighted using word-painting in the orchestra. In the concert, it was played immediately before Sibelius Symphony No. 5 in Eb Major, Op. 82, which is programmatically similar as it featured swan calls as the main motif.
Text:
Everything is better without people
and even better together
I like that islands are places for liking clouds
and learning the habits of toads, rabbits, ravens and lichen
Shipwrecks are stories instead of tragedies
These are just bones to step over on the path
Soon to be swept by a hatching egg
A succession of flowers, or some other sort of wind
home to tea drinkers, laughers, overthinkers who know
the sunset is the event of the evening
you can't see it behind that hill
We try to make the world smaller
It was always small if you had wings
The sea is a jungle where shearwaters live
dancing in gridlines- feet tapping green water
The quickest bird takes twelve days to Patagonia
mirroring the freedom found in the parts of us
that linger under stars before turning in
Yet wings didn’t shrink this world to charm it
Science makes skin a layer thicker
Tongues a grade sharper
A process to process the world
I, who saw diving gannets and cried
now defend results we find
like I’ve never even had an emotion
There’s still room to feel it
I like that birds are loud
4 am comes, and closing wings know
they have just flown the Atlantic
The night, fills with an acquired kind of music
a duet written for reunion
Their stories are attached to the tarsus
I wait to retrieve them
What happened last year now lives somewhere else
Moving, eating, being a good partner, is all a bit harder
Nobody wants you to fall but we can't predict all storms
And you were built for a more ancient world
I hope we can grow and change together
I hope it all slows down
If migration is an escape, then we chose our winter
If the city is made of eyes, then there are too many windows
from which no one looks out
before coming in
Birds sit at sea
waiting for dusk on what we call a raft
Nobody settles on water