A Chain is Broken
Choral Music
chorus with piano
work detail
instrumentation: SATB, tenor, piano, optional violin
completion date: august 2019
duration: 4 minutes
texts: An original commissioned poem by Khashayar Tonekaboni
events
ACDA MIDWESTERN REGIONAL CONFERENCE PERFORMANCE
NOTUS, Dominick DiOrio
Harris Theater - Chicago, Illinois
1:00 pm
In July 2020, NOTUS was to have travelled to the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland, New Zealand... but the universe had other plans. Here is a program planned for then but updated for now, as America wrestles with its own multifarious history and intersections of cultural voices of today. Featuring Carlos Cordero's Ayúdame, Andrea Ramsey's Stomp on the Fire, Reena Esmail's Tuttarana, Joel Thompson's America Will Be!, and the live world premieres of Moira Smiley's Wire You Here and Dominick DiOrio's A Chain is Broken (with a commissioned original poem by Iranian American poet Khashayar Tonekaboni). Also featuring the premiere performance of the Raymond Brock Commissioned Work: Eriks Esenvalds Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
WHAT IS OURS: MUSIC FOR AN AMERICA IN PROGRESS
NOTUS, Dominick DiOrio
IU Jacobs School of Music - Auer Hall - Bloomington, Indiana
8:00 pm
In July 2020, NOTUS was to have travelled to the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland, New Zealand... but the universe had other plans. Here is a program planned for then but updated for now, as America wrestles with its own multifarious history and intersections of cultural voices of today. Featuring Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's Visions of a Child: A Pueblo Lullaby, Carlos Cordero's Ayúdame, Andrea Ramsey's Stomp on the Fire, Reena Esmail's Tuttarana, Joel Thompson's America Will Be!, and the live world premieres of Moira Smiley's Wire You Here and Dominick DiOrio's A Chain is Broken (with a commissioned original poem by Iranian American poet Khashayar Tonekaboni). Also featuring conductors Peter Kadeli and Alex Koppel.
HOMECOMING CONCERT: CAL LUTHERAN CHORAL ENSEMBLES
Cal Lutheran Choir - Wyant Morton
Samuelson Chapel - California Lutheran University - Thousand Oaks, CA
2:00 pm
The Cal Lutheran Choir and Cielo (treble choir) with conductor Wyant Morton open the season with one of their hallmark concerts, featuring an eclectic program of innovative and exciting contemporary choral music. Included is my original work A Chain is Broken for tenor, piano, violin, and mixed chorus. More information here.
THE PROMISE OF LIVING
Bloomington Chamber Singers
Christ Community Church of Bloomington 503 South High Street Bloomington, IN
7:30 pm
Gerald Sousa and the Bloomington Chamber Singers perform my work A Chain is Broken as part of their concert featuring Voces Novae, the IU African American Choral Ensemble, and guest hosts Marietta Simpson and Sylvia McNair. More information here.
COR CANTIAMO @ RAVINIA: BREAKING OUR SOUND INTO A NEW DAY
Cor Cantiamo & Senn High School
Bennett Gordon Hall at Ravinia 201 St Johns Ave Highland Park, IL 60035
7:00 pm
Featuring professional ensemble Cor Cantiamo and their director Eric Johnson, this concert is being presented through the Ravinia Reach/Teach/Play program, where Cor Cantiamo will share the stage with singers from Senn high School, a performing arts magnet school in the Chicago Public School System. Featuring my work A Chain is Broken. More information and free tickets.
WE STAND TOGETHER
Arlington Chorale
Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington (4444 Arlington Blvd, Arlington, VA 22204)
5:00 pm
Ingrid Lestrud and the Arlington Chorale perform my work A Chain is Broken as part of their June concert, "We Stand Together." More information.
NOTUS @ NCCO10
NOTUS, Dominick DiOrio
Morehouse College - Atlanta, GA
11:30 am
NOTUS has been selected to be one of the performing ensembles for the National Collegiate Choral Organization's 10th Biennial Conference: "Coming Home." DiOrio and NOTUS will present a program of music titled "America in Progress," which includes selections from NOTUS' recent album What Is Ours. Featured composers include Reena Esmail, Moira Smiley, IU alumni Kahan Taraporevala and Alex Berko, and DiOrio's own A Chain is Broken. Open to attendees of NCCO10.
NOTUS: YOU THROUGH ME
NOTUS * Dominick DiOrio, director
Auer Concert Hall - Indiana University - Bloomington, IN
8:00 pm
NOTUS' first concert of the year, You Through Me, centers a performance of Caroline Shaw's To the Hands and a 100th anniversary mounting of Charles Ives' seminal Psalm 90 for chorus, organ, and tubular bells. The concert also features new works by IU alumni Kahan Taraporevala (Youth) and Alex Berko (You Through Me), as well as the world premiere of IU student composer Thejas Mirle's Du Silbena Datia (The Sighing Mists), which won Third Prize in the 2023 NOTUS Student Composition Contest. Free and open to all.
PORTALS
Una Voce Chamber Choir
Universalist Church - 1 Middle St, Brunswick, ME
7:00 pm
Una Voce Chamber Choir and Artistic Director Virgil Bozeman IV perform songs of community, migration, transformation, and new beginnings. Featuring music of Saunder Choi, Dominick DiOrio (A Chain is Broken), Reena Esmail, and Vineet Shende. Tickets here.
PORTALS
Una Voce Chamber Choir
Universalist Church - 1 Middle St, Brunswick, ME
2:00 pm
Una Voce Chamber Choir and Artistic Director Virgil Bozeman IV perform songs of community, migration, transformation, and new beginnings. Featuring music of Saunder Choi, Dominick DiOrio (A Chain is Broken), Reena Esmail, and Vineet Shende. Tickets here.
videos
A Chain is Broken (world premiere)
A Chain Is Broken (2019) NOTUS Nicholas Stevens, tenor Erina Buchholz, violin Rees Taylor Roberts, piano Dominick DiOrio, conductor & composer On an original commissioned poem, “Earth’s Anthem” by Khashayar Tonekaboni. World premiere performance.
performances
California Lutheran University Choir - Wyant Morton, director - Samuelson Chapel - CLU Campus - Thousand Oaks, CA
press
recordings
NOTUS * Dominick DiOrio, director
Roger Roe * English horn
There are generally two ways one can face a crisis. One can give up, or one can persevere and use it to one’s advantage. Choir director Dominick DiOrio definitely chose the latter during the pandemic, turning his reflections and sentiments about it into a profoundly engaging, almost philosophical choral album titled WHAT IS OURS. DiOrio conjures a formidable cross-section of music by a range of contemporary composers that not only reflects the diversity and multiplicity of modern-day America, but also its underbelly of struggle, challenge, and an eventual triumph of humanity.
commission and dedication:
Commissioned by NOTUS: Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble - Dominick DiOrio, director, and made possible with funding from Indiana University’s New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program.
composer's note
A Chain is Broken is a musical setting of an original poem, Earth’s Anthem, by Iranian-American author and poet Khashayar Tonekaboni (pen name Terry Pinaud). The poem is a creative reimagining of the poet’s own experience of starting a new life in the United States, after he moved here from Iran to study at Indiana University. In the poem, Tonekaboni writes in both Persian and English, as he illustrates the difficulties associated with finding a new way when he was also gradually learning to understand a new language. As the poem progresses, its initial uncertainty turns to feelings of aspiration, optimism, and joy, even while still recognizing that “with freedom comes a cost.”
The music is also aspirational in its trajectory, moving from the opening murkiness in which a tenor soloist is heard over a foggy confusion of English words to an ever more powerful clarity infused with rhythmic propulsion and drive.
The work was written by DiOrio for NOTUS—the contemporary vocal ensemble at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music—to perform at the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland. (Ultimately, the premiere was postponed due to the coronavirus.) The commissioning of the music and the text were both made possible with support from the Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Extraordinary Opportunity program.
text
Gham daaram, Maadar I’m sad, Mother
Kojayee, Pédar? Where are you, Father?
Gharibeh-am keh dar I’m a stranger
Beyneh gharibeh-haast Among strangers
Deerooz, baa ham boodeem Yesterday, we were together
Deerooz, khandeh Yesterday, there was laughter
Chehreh-ye Maadar, keh feda kardeh Mother’s countenance and her sacrifice
Khaterehi tanha beyneh sedaahaast Are but memories among the voices
Cheh meegooyand? What are they saying?
Cheh meeporsand? What are they asking?
Beh cheh meekhandand? What makes them laugh?
Gom-shodeh injaa tanhaast He who is lost is here alone
Do they understand?
A smile and
A nod and
A barrier is crossed
And I see unity
Of ideas, of thoughts that brings
Laughter at laughable things
Together, engendering trust
A new world is at hand
New faces, new expressions
Together in diverse collections
An ocean of love and lust
For freedom stands
Facing me, embracing me
Carrying, chasing me
From maybe to must
Certainty replaces
Trepidation and fear
Friends and lovers are here
Laughing, crying, their faces embossed
With joy, with pain
Still, a chain is broken
And moods are spoken
But with freedom comes a cost
Dear to bear the burden of
Standing on both feet and
Shouting to the world, taking a stand
I am no longer tossed
On the waves of will
Of others. I’ll speak
For me and mine, no longer meek
And for the globe in whose crust
Is baked the love of all
Sometimes hidden
Some forbidden
But never is Mother thrust
In the dark of hate
For long when all the I’s
Proclaim Earth’s anthem never dies
Singing the stories of each of us.
information
events
ACDA MIDWESTERN REGIONAL CONFERENCE PERFORMANCE
NOTUS, Dominick DiOrio
Harris Theater - Chicago, Illinois
1:00 pm
In July 2020, NOTUS was to have travelled to the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland, New Zealand... but the universe had other plans. Here is a program planned for then but updated for now, as America wrestles with its own multifarious history and intersections of cultural voices of today. Featuring Carlos Cordero's Ayúdame, Andrea Ramsey's Stomp on the Fire, Reena Esmail's Tuttarana, Joel Thompson's America Will Be!, and the live world premieres of Moira Smiley's Wire You Here and Dominick DiOrio's A Chain is Broken (with a commissioned original poem by Iranian American poet Khashayar Tonekaboni). Also featuring the premiere performance of the Raymond Brock Commissioned Work: Eriks Esenvalds Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
WHAT IS OURS: MUSIC FOR AN AMERICA IN PROGRESS
NOTUS, Dominick DiOrio
IU Jacobs School of Music - Auer Hall - Bloomington, Indiana
8:00 pm
In July 2020, NOTUS was to have travelled to the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland, New Zealand... but the universe had other plans. Here is a program planned for then but updated for now, as America wrestles with its own multifarious history and intersections of cultural voices of today. Featuring Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's Visions of a Child: A Pueblo Lullaby, Carlos Cordero's Ayúdame, Andrea Ramsey's Stomp on the Fire, Reena Esmail's Tuttarana, Joel Thompson's America Will Be!, and the live world premieres of Moira Smiley's Wire You Here and Dominick DiOrio's A Chain is Broken (with a commissioned original poem by Iranian American poet Khashayar Tonekaboni). Also featuring conductors Peter Kadeli and Alex Koppel.
HOMECOMING CONCERT: CAL LUTHERAN CHORAL ENSEMBLES
Cal Lutheran Choir - Wyant Morton
Samuelson Chapel - California Lutheran University - Thousand Oaks, CA
2:00 pm
The Cal Lutheran Choir and Cielo (treble choir) with conductor Wyant Morton open the season with one of their hallmark concerts, featuring an eclectic program of innovative and exciting contemporary choral music. Included is my original work A Chain is Broken for tenor, piano, violin, and mixed chorus. More information here.
THE PROMISE OF LIVING
Bloomington Chamber Singers
Christ Community Church of Bloomington 503 South High Street Bloomington, IN
7:30 pm
Gerald Sousa and the Bloomington Chamber Singers perform my work A Chain is Broken as part of their concert featuring Voces Novae, the IU African American Choral Ensemble, and guest hosts Marietta Simpson and Sylvia McNair. More information here.
COR CANTIAMO @ RAVINIA: BREAKING OUR SOUND INTO A NEW DAY
Cor Cantiamo & Senn High School
Bennett Gordon Hall at Ravinia 201 St Johns Ave Highland Park, IL 60035
7:00 pm
Featuring professional ensemble Cor Cantiamo and their director Eric Johnson, this concert is being presented through the Ravinia Reach/Teach/Play program, where Cor Cantiamo will share the stage with singers from Senn high School, a performing arts magnet school in the Chicago Public School System. Featuring my work A Chain is Broken. More information and free tickets.
WE STAND TOGETHER
Arlington Chorale
Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington (4444 Arlington Blvd, Arlington, VA 22204)
5:00 pm
Ingrid Lestrud and the Arlington Chorale perform my work A Chain is Broken as part of their June concert, "We Stand Together." More information.
NOTUS @ NCCO10
NOTUS, Dominick DiOrio
Morehouse College - Atlanta, GA
11:30 am
NOTUS has been selected to be one of the performing ensembles for the National Collegiate Choral Organization's 10th Biennial Conference: "Coming Home." DiOrio and NOTUS will present a program of music titled "America in Progress," which includes selections from NOTUS' recent album What Is Ours. Featured composers include Reena Esmail, Moira Smiley, IU alumni Kahan Taraporevala and Alex Berko, and DiOrio's own A Chain is Broken. Open to attendees of NCCO10.
NOTUS: YOU THROUGH ME
NOTUS * Dominick DiOrio, director
Auer Concert Hall - Indiana University - Bloomington, IN
8:00 pm
NOTUS' first concert of the year, You Through Me, centers a performance of Caroline Shaw's To the Hands and a 100th anniversary mounting of Charles Ives' seminal Psalm 90 for chorus, organ, and tubular bells. The concert also features new works by IU alumni Kahan Taraporevala (Youth) and Alex Berko (You Through Me), as well as the world premiere of IU student composer Thejas Mirle's Du Silbena Datia (The Sighing Mists), which won Third Prize in the 2023 NOTUS Student Composition Contest. Free and open to all.
PORTALS
Una Voce Chamber Choir
Universalist Church - 1 Middle St, Brunswick, ME
7:00 pm
Una Voce Chamber Choir and Artistic Director Virgil Bozeman IV perform songs of community, migration, transformation, and new beginnings. Featuring music of Saunder Choi, Dominick DiOrio (A Chain is Broken), Reena Esmail, and Vineet Shende. Tickets here.
PORTALS
Una Voce Chamber Choir
Universalist Church - 1 Middle St, Brunswick, ME
2:00 pm
Una Voce Chamber Choir and Artistic Director Virgil Bozeman IV perform songs of community, migration, transformation, and new beginnings. Featuring music of Saunder Choi, Dominick DiOrio (A Chain is Broken), Reena Esmail, and Vineet Shende. Tickets here.
videos
A Chain is Broken (world premiere)
A Chain Is Broken (2019) NOTUS Nicholas Stevens, tenor Erina Buchholz, violin Rees Taylor Roberts, piano Dominick DiOrio, conductor & composer On an original commissioned poem, “Earth’s Anthem” by Khashayar Tonekaboni. World premiere performance.
performances
California Lutheran University Choir - Wyant Morton, director - Samuelson Chapel - CLU Campus - Thousand Oaks, CA
press
- 2023-01-12: Student vocal ensemble, NOTUS, recently released second album ‘What is Ours: Music for an America in Progress’
- 2023-04-07: REVIEW: What Is Ours (Navona: NV6484)
- 2023-05-20: REVIEW: NOTUS "What Is Ours: Music for an America in Progress"
recordings
NOTUS * Dominick DiOrio, director
Roger Roe * English horn
There are generally two ways one can face a crisis. One can give up, or one can persevere and use it to one’s advantage. Choir director Dominick DiOrio definitely chose the latter during the pandemic, turning his reflections and sentiments about it into a profoundly engaging, almost philosophical choral album titled WHAT IS OURS. DiOrio conjures a formidable cross-section of music by a range of contemporary composers that not only reflects the diversity and multiplicity of modern-day America, but also its underbelly of struggle, challenge, and an eventual triumph of humanity.
commission and dedication:
Commissioned by NOTUS: Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble - Dominick DiOrio, director, and made possible with funding from Indiana University’s New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program.
composer's note
A Chain is Broken is a musical setting of an original poem, Earth’s Anthem, by Iranian-American author and poet Khashayar Tonekaboni (pen name Terry Pinaud). The poem is a creative reimagining of the poet’s own experience of starting a new life in the United States, after he moved here from Iran to study at Indiana University. In the poem, Tonekaboni writes in both Persian and English, as he illustrates the difficulties associated with finding a new way when he was also gradually learning to understand a new language. As the poem progresses, its initial uncertainty turns to feelings of aspiration, optimism, and joy, even while still recognizing that “with freedom comes a cost.”
The music is also aspirational in its trajectory, moving from the opening murkiness in which a tenor soloist is heard over a foggy confusion of English words to an ever more powerful clarity infused with rhythmic propulsion and drive.
The work was written by DiOrio for NOTUS—the contemporary vocal ensemble at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music—to perform at the 12th World Symposium on Choral Music in Auckland. (Ultimately, the premiere was postponed due to the coronavirus.) The commissioning of the music and the text were both made possible with support from the Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Extraordinary Opportunity program.
text
Gham daaram, Maadar I’m sad, Mother
Kojayee, Pédar? Where are you, Father?
Gharibeh-am keh dar I’m a stranger
Beyneh gharibeh-haast Among strangers
Deerooz, baa ham boodeem Yesterday, we were together
Deerooz, khandeh Yesterday, there was laughter
Chehreh-ye Maadar, keh feda kardeh Mother’s countenance and her sacrifice
Khaterehi tanha beyneh sedaahaast Are but memories among the voices
Cheh meegooyand? What are they saying?
Cheh meeporsand? What are they asking?
Beh cheh meekhandand? What makes them laugh?
Gom-shodeh injaa tanhaast He who is lost is here alone
Do they understand?
A smile and
A nod and
A barrier is crossed
And I see unity
Of ideas, of thoughts that brings
Laughter at laughable things
Together, engendering trust
A new world is at hand
New faces, new expressions
Together in diverse collections
An ocean of love and lust
For freedom stands
Facing me, embracing me
Carrying, chasing me
From maybe to must
Certainty replaces
Trepidation and fear
Friends and lovers are here
Laughing, crying, their faces embossed
With joy, with pain
Still, a chain is broken
And moods are spoken
But with freedom comes a cost
Dear to bear the burden of
Standing on both feet and
Shouting to the world, taking a stand
I am no longer tossed
On the waves of will
Of others. I’ll speak
For me and mine, no longer meek
And for the globe in whose crust
Is baked the love of all
Sometimes hidden
Some forbidden
But never is Mother thrust
In the dark of hate
For long when all the I’s
Proclaim Earth’s anthem never dies
Singing the stories of each of us.
