Brian Topp and Thursdays Writing Collective

This song is based on a poem written by 19 members of the Collective. Each of us began with the same line at the top of a blank sheet – “the devil doesn’t have any music.” It’s a quote from singer Mavis Staples. We each wrote a sentence of our own invention below that and then passed the page to the right. On the sheet we received from the left we read what was there and added another and then again passed the pages to the right. And so on. Later Elee softly assembled the lines from all 19 poems into this one collective poem.

Above is a recording from the premiere at UBC School of Music on April 2, 2015. Brian Topp, composer; Thursdays Writing Collective, writers; Hannah Gomme, soprano; Hannah Han, piano. Below is the full score.