Neil Aitken & Juhi Bansal
Juhi Bansal: Neil and I worked on this project in a class at USC called Writer and Composer. After having heard Neil's texts through the course of the semester when he was assigned to other composers, I jumped at the chance during the final project to work with him. All his poetry that I'd heard up till then had a very lyrical, beautiful quality, that inspired me and meshed very well with my own aesthetic. Additionally, Neil's poems have a sort of ebb and flow to them that translates extremely well to music, so I was really excited to have the chance to put them to music.
Neil allowed me to take a lot of freedom with his poems - something which I really appreciate and which allowed them to become better songs. For example, he has a tendency to sometimes use really long descriptive sentences, which, when you look at a piece solely as a poem, actually give it a flow and rhythm which is quite musical in of itself. When I was setting these for a singer, however, Neil and I decided to trim these sentences a little, so that the meaning could be delivered more clearly when sung.
READ AN INTERVIEW WITH NEIL AND JUHI ON THEIR COLLABORATIVE PROCESS ON THE BLOG WE ARE HOMER
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Selections from The Lost Country of Sight
by Neil Aitken
Conductor: Juhi Bansal
For Voice, Cello, Piano, and Percussion
Soprano - Debra Penberthy / Piano - Nicolas Gerpe / Cello - Stella Cho / Percussion - Eric Guinivan
"Kite Flying"
"Halfway"
"Credo"
"I Dream My Father on the Shore"
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Neil Tangaroa Aitken is the author of The Lost Country of Sight which won the 2007 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press in 2008. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times and has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, The Drunken Boat, Ninth Letter, Poetry Southeast, Sou'wester, and elsewhere.Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Neil grew up in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the western parts of the United States and Canada. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Brigham Young University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California - Riverside, and is currently working on a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.
Prior to pursuing graduate work in creative writing, Neil was a computer programmer for a multi-national games publisher. Although he no longer writes game code for companies, his love of programming and technology has recently manifested itself in his current poetry manuscript project, Babbage's Dream, which explores the themes of exile, beauty, and isolation within the world of computers and computer programmers. Poems from this manuscript have already been finding homes in fine literary journals.
When not writing poetry or designing websites, Neil serves as the editor of Boxcar Poetry Review, an online literary journal focused on publishing poetry and showcasing reviews and interviews pertaining to first books of poetry. You can visit it here.
Juhi Bansal, an Indian composer raised in Hong Kong, is currently working towards a doctorate in music composition at the University of Southern California, studying under Donald Crockett. Her previous teachers have included Erica Muhl, Frank Ticheli, Frederick Lesemann, and Stephen Hartke.
Her music, with its eclectic mix of ethnic and colouristic elements, is starting to gain international acclaim. Recent performances include her piece Gulden Draak, at the Oregon Bach Festival Composer’s Symposium, her Piano Trio (played by Pacific Music Festival orchestra academy members) at Kitara hall in Sapporo, Japan, and her flute and percussion trio, T’tuooll, at the SICPP New Music festival in Boston. Her music has also been performed by percussionist Scott Deal and vocalist Jenna Lyle, at Indiana University, Purdue, and Cleveland State University, respectively, as well as numerous performances in Los Angeles.
Recent commissions include a song cycle for the Lotte Lehman Foundation, Black, for the guitarist Connie Shue, and two multi-percussion solos for recitals at the University of Southern California. Recent awards and honours include third prize in the Lotte Lehman Foundation’s Art Song Competition, 2009 and 2006 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer awards, and a fellowships to attend the Seasons Music Festi(val and Pacific Music Festival.