The Moon Keeps Her Vigil

oboe, cello, piano

2025

Premiere Performance: October 17, 2025 by Tracy Jaskot (oboe), Joseph Cracolici (cello), and Matthew Jaskot, piano

About the Piece

The Moon Keeps Her Vigil is an arrangement of a movement from my concert-length

song-cycle, Close and Apart, a piece inspired by Eric Gregory’s memoir All My

Tomorrows: A Story of Tragedy, Transplant, and Hope, in which he recounts the tragic

loss of his nineteen-year-old son Christopher, but also documents the good that

resulted in connecting with the organ donor recipients who received new life as a

result of Chirstopher’s passing. The song-cycle was developed and written in

collaboration with poet Susan Elizabeth (Beth) Sweeney. The ninth and final

poem (although placed toward the middle of the cycle) that Beth sent

me was “Somewhere Outside” and I was immediately struck by the following lines:

… Somewhere

outside, the sky must be turning

a deeper purple, the moon

keeping her vigil.

Although these lines were in the middle of the poem, they struck me as appropriate to set as a song refrain, and Beth granted me creative liberty to rearrange the words of the poem as such. These words are set like a gentle folk song, granting reprieve from the intense middle section of Close and Apart. As the “verses” are presented, they are heard in counterpoint with the refrain and the melodic lines of the other verses. In this arrangement, the oboe plays the role of the vocalist (primarily), while the cello and piano play the role of the instrumental accompaniment. For more on Close and Apart, please visit www.closeandapart.com, and you can find a recording of the full song-cycle on my YouTube channel.

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