RAH! from Eat Your Vegetables! - Set One

Eat Your Vegetables – Set One is a collection of three brief pieces for choir and clarinet based on a humorous set of poems by Northwest educator & poet Joanne Gunnerson. Each of the three poems focuses on a different vegetable, and my settings each have their own distinct character and style. The third movement—“RAH!”—was commissioned by Dr. Gary Weidenaar & the Central Washington University Chamber Choir. Celebrating “the lowly rutabaga,” I really had to “dig deep” (sorry) to muster up some positive feelings (let alone a cheer!) about rutabagas, the syllabically superior cousins to turnips and parsnips. Despite my own indifference, let alone disdain, for that class of root vegetables in general (I do love beets, however!), I managed to create a preposterous paean to the timid taproot. I also set three additional “veggie” poems by Gunnerson for choir, trumpet, and percussion in a set that I creatively titled Eat Your Vegetables! – Set Two. To say anything else would spoil the surprises….Oops! I’ve already said too much! Except to say, “Enjoy!