Alternative Facts
Featuring Gloria Cheng
Alternative Facts was composed as a reaction to the 2016 presidential campaign, election, and subsequent inauguration of our current president.
Promethean Fire
Featuring Hila Plitmann
The piece was composed for the July 7, 2019, Mount Wilson Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome series, curated by cellist and artistic director Cécilia Tsan.
Event Horizon
Featuring the Wembley Players
The piece *Event Horizon,* recorded at C.T.S. in London by the Wembley Players, conducted by Bruce Babcock, with video created by documentary filmmaker Todd Mason using images from the NASA-Hubble Space Telescope.
Be Still
All Saints Church Pasadena
Psalm 46:10. Composed by Bruce Babcock. Premiered at All Saints Church Pasadena by Coventry Choir on Sunday, March 3, 2013.
Give Me Your Stars
Featuring Hila Piltmann
This song was commissioned by my friend, the marvelous soprano Hila Plitmann, for her concert at Mason Home Concerts (Los Angeles) on March 17, 2018. The concert was titled “Love and Remembrance.” The piece is a setting of a Sara Teasdale poem entitled “Give Me Your Stars.”
My parents met in December of 1939 in Williams Bay Wisconsin, where my father was working at Yerkes Observatory (built by George Ellery Hale, who also built Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories), and my mother was teaching school. During their courtship my mom wrote many love letters to my father and this poem was hand-copied into one of those letters. She, a small-town preacher’s kid, was knocked off her feet by this important astronomer from California. So the imagery of sky and stars, as well as peace and heaven-high, resonated strongly. Coincidentally, the poem was written the same year my mother was born, 1915.
GIVE ME YOUR STARS
Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.
I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.
I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies, —
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.
Sara Teasdale (1915)
All Unto Me
All Saints Church Pasadena
“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” John 12:32.
“All Unto Me” is a tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, a longtime friend of All Saints Church, Pasadena, and was composed to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the church.
The Red Dress
Featuring Juliana Gondek
THIS IS WHAT I KNOW – Four Songs on Poems of Dorothy Parker, composed by Bruce Babcock.
Fair Weather
Featuring Juliana Gondek
THIS IS WHAT I KNOW – Four Songs on Poems of Dorothy Parker, composed by Bruce Babcock.
Somebody’s Song
Featuring Juliana Gondek
THIS IS WHAT I KNOW – Four Songs on Poems of Dorothy Parker, composed by Bruce Babcock.
Watcher of The Sky
Featuring The Sirius Quartet
Concerts in the Dome
Premiere, Watcher of the Sky July 1, 2018
The Return
For orchestra
