On the Air (Dear Vaccine)

Description

On the Air (Dear Vaccine) discusses the optimism for a post-COVID world and, particularly, the desire to sing together again. For the text, poet Seán Street drew inspiration from 'Dear Vaccine', which is a global community poetry project in which people are invited to share their thoughts and hopes for the development of COVID-19 vaccines. McDowall has emulated the hopefulness of the text through the energy of the music and the use of both speaking and singing voices.

Programme Notes:
“I was delighted when the Cleveland Chamber Choir, Ohio, and Scott MacPherson, Artistic Director, commissioned me to write a piece for their concerts on 26 and 27 February 2022. I always enjoy exploring possible texts to set and the process, this time, was most unusual and interesting. I was guided to the newly created website, the Global Vaccine Poem project, a platform imaginatively devised by the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. People around the world were encouraged to express their hopes and expectations on this website, in poetic language, for a future after vaccination as we emerge from the pandemic.

“I asked the British poet, writer, and broadcaster, Seán Street, to select some poetic strands from this rich collection of texts. He and I have collaborated many times before but this commission was very different. Seán treated each line he drew on, from the Dear Vaccine website, with the greatest delicacy; of course, every expression was submitted as a cherished wish in the midst of our very bleak, pre-vaccine landscape. Seán then shaped these extracts into his own poetic form, opening with a spoken address to Dear Vaccine, brimming with anticipation. What follows is a progression of increasingly uplifting stanzas, culminating in the lines, We are the choirunmasked, unveiled, unmuted. Breathe air, and sing! Of course, when we conceived the new work we were hopeful that the pandemic would have faded into the shadows. But alas, in February 2022, it was still with us and though the singers were masked and veiled, as they were contracted to do, thankfully they were unmuted.”

– Cecilia McDowall