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About the Composer:
Duncan Tuomi (b. 1994) is a choral conductor and award-winning composer based in Los Angeles, California. He currently studies choral music in the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the University of Southern California (USC), where he also completed his Master of Music degree. In addition to his choral music degree, he studied composition with Dr. Frank Ticheli and Dr. Chris Rozé. He also holds a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Music Education from St. Olaf College, where he studied under Dr. Anton Armstrong and Dr. Christopher Aspaas, among many others.
As a composer, Tuomi was the winner of the 2023 American Prize in Short Choral Works, College and University Division, as well as the 2021 American Choral Director’s Association’s Raymond W. Brock Memorial Student Composition Competition. He was also a composition fellow in Choral Arts Initiative’s summer 2022 PREMIERE|Project. Tuomi has had works premiered by Choral Arts Initiative under the direction of Brandon Elliott, the USC Thornton Chamber Singers and University Chorus under his own direction and under the direction of Stevie J. Hirner, the Long Beach Youth Chorus under the direction of Stevie J. Hirner, the University of Portland Chamber Singers under the direction of Dr. Michael Connolly, the Pacific University Chamber Singers under the direction of Dr. Scott Tuomi. He has received commissions from the Long Beach Youth Chorus and was commissioned to compose for the 10th annual Brothers, Sing On! Tenor/Bass Choir Festival in 2018.
About the Piece:
“I have always held a deep love for the pacific northwest. The Opal Sea serves as my musical love letter to this gorgeous region. Ella Higginson was a pacific northwest based poet around the turn of the 20th century, and upon finding this beautiful sonnet she wrote about the Salish Sea in Washington, I immediately knew that I wanted to use it. I constructed this piece as something of a call and response between the poet and the nature that she describes.
The harp (or piano) repeats variations on the same motive with small elaborations each time, as one looking out over the scene of the sea would see the same image, but notice something small and new each time. In response to these images, the choral response echoes the romantic artistic philosophy that it will always be the objective of art to effectively capture the beauty of nature, and it will always be the fate of art to fail. The choral sections imitate elements of the primary theme, but with small alterations that separate them sonically, then as the poetry takes hold, the music diverges to a greater degree, bringing each new observation to the fore in a series of small complications. While each new poetic thought is beautiful in its own right, it remains tonally distinct from the purity of the nature it seeks to describe.”