Program Note:

This set of songs is dedicated to my brother, Ed, who died on December 11, 2025, after battling dementia. He was as courageous in facing that challenge as he was in being a devoted husband and father and a wonderful, decent man. Some of the poems are specifically about his path, especially The Frontage Road, and Vacancy as they talk about the ins and outs of being present, and trying to, literally, makes sense in the moment. The three “prayers”: One Wish (dedicated to my sister, Mary, who died in 1974 at age 28 from Hodgkin’s Disease), Come With Me (for any loved one) and A Star in the Heavens (for my friend, James, who died during COVID) look at death and my notion that, when time wins, we assimilate into one another. The poems: I’m a Book on a Shelf and If Only I Forgave Sooner are about conversations Ed and I had about self-reflection.  — Reg Huston

Early on in my friendship with Ned Rorem, we discovered our profound agreement about those poems that we ultimately chose to set to music. We discovered that the primary thing they all had in common was the fact that, to paraphrase George Fox, they were the ones that “spoke to our condition” at the time we took them on. Nearly a half century later, I set these words of Reg Huston memorializing a lost brother, infusing them with the feelings that the loss of my brothers still evoke in me. — Daron Hagen