- Commissioned by consortium led by Kevin Dugat
- Instrumentation: tenor voice, trombone, piano
- Approximate duration: 13min30 (performance duration may vary widely)
- Difficulty: advanced
- Completed and premiered in 2024
- Only digital/PDF files are provided upon checkout
This work was commissioned by a consortium consisting of the following contributors:
- Kevin Dugat, Lead Contributor
- Trey English
- Tyler & Megan McClendon
- Collin Tyrrell
- Dr. Marty Lenard, Ph.D
- Seth Lafler
- Dr. Jonathan Babcock & Danton Bankay
- Dr. Brittany Lasch
- Dr. Anthony Cosio-Marron
- Hayden Wood
- Kevin Virgilio
- Don Lucas
- Jeremy Wilson
- Eli Bordeaux
- Dr. Austin Motley
- Daniel Cosio
- Dr. Dunwoody Mirvil
- Lauen Casey Clyde
- Dr. Jett Walker
- Dr. Bruce Faske
- Dr. Sterling Tanner
- Jeremiah Ward
- Dr. Martin McCain
- Oscar Perez
- Dr. Spencer Hudson
This work was also made possible through additional donations from the following supporters:
- Byron & Adonna Dugat
- Dennis & Kathy Faleris
- Gabe Rice
- Steve & Darcy Ronan
- Charles Schenk & Kathleen Miller
- Henry Dreitner
This set of three songs was commissioned by a consortium led by Kevin Dugat, whose artistic journey serve’s as the work’s foundation. Through Kevin’s journal writings and much discussion, Alicia Method composed three beautiful poems that touch on ideas of home, the passing of time, and—more broadly—the struggles, acceptances, and triumphs of an artist’s journey through introspective personal development.
original poetry composed by Alicia Method based upon journal writings by Kevin Dugat
Home
Open your eyes and smell
a sulfuric reek.
Open your mouth and hear
rubber balls ding-donging the sides of our house
little and deep in a rollicking metropolis.
Open your soul and see a
shadow of the God they talked about in Sunday School.
They said, “God is our dwelling place, our refuge.”
But that first dwelling place of mine, I could only find
in the taste of memorized scents and sounds,
poignant and a few fragile decades out of reach.
Mother said the car honk leaving was just the horn of Jericho crumbling my babied barriers.
Faces—no lives—foreign to mine rose up
like the gangly cedars grouped in gossiping circles,
whispering that nothing had really changed at all.
Longing has always been the fabric of my spirit
and always’ have always been draped in perpetual newness.
For what else is a refuge than the very thing that melts the world away
and taps on your temples, waking you up to work?
What else is a refuge than a purpose? A person?
You who hold me,
close to the beating ground.
Someone still remind me that this home of mine
so vastly undefined,
is sitting for me, rocking in a creaky cotton chair,
waiting for my arrival.
The Ticking Clock
To pursue one’s passion is a privilege.
In times many privileges turn sour.
They curl like molten peels from green apples.
In the morning, Impatience breathes on the neck,
bringing wakefulness with the hot air of Responsibility.
Expectation glares from inside the glassy mirror,
hovers over the peak of noon.
Rest, blanketed in nine p.m. darkness,
bears the mask of indolence—it grins.
Time dissolves like the spattering of raindrops
decorating the windshield of a hurtling car.
What sacrificies have leaked—bled out—on the ground where we
strain for the perfect phrase, the tuned wobbling note—
God!
This up-down-floundering-failure
feels as though it should be wrapped in the bandages of a burgeoning dexterity.
Chasing art can make the most earnest seem selfish.
Warm Night in a Northern City
A warm night in a northern city:
quiet and out of character, cloaked in steam
spooling out behind bridges of brick.
I find myself in this place, where for a moment
the streetlights are depressed into a murky, fluttering haze.
Now my proving ground, my adversary.
The evening obstructs my footsteps—
a forgery of faith.
Only here, where the distant blaring of horns disturbs the damp air,
will my discomfort be washed aside
by the pull of a greater tide.
Walking down a dimly lit street of brownstones, I reach my destination.
Wind at my back gently nudges me inside.
Coming soon!