Of Love's Wait - Performance Recording - I. Upon the Stars - Josie Garcia, Mary Sundem, Isaiah Valdez - March 31, 2026
Each time I gaze upon the stars, my thoughts unfailingly gravitate towards you.
Even amidst the injunctions against it, for we inhabit disparate worlds, yet the sensation persists that we tread the same ethereal path.
I yearn to seize the heavens, yet such an endeavor remains incomplete sans your presence.
Perhaps, in time, our orbits will converge anew,
permitting you to escort me beneath the familiar tapestry of our shared nights.
And as I draw my final breath, after eons of anticipation,
it is you with whom I wish to commune with beneath the stars.
© Abigail Valadez 2024
As and artist, I always have an appreciation of mediums outside of music that can express our emotions : painting, sculpting, photography, etc. One in particular that I've found a deep appreciation for is that of literature, and specifically poetry and how so much emotion can be conveyed through words. It's through this appreciation that the idea of this piece came about.
Of Love's Wait is a work based on the poem of the same name written by Abigail Valadez, a fellow musican colleague of mine. In it, she explores the emotion behind longing for love and the hope to reconnect with something that was lost, having been driven away. Having read this poem myself and wanting to set words to music, there was no better opportunity for this than with Abi's beautiful poetry.
Scored for piano trio, this work is comprised of 3 movements :
I. Upon the Stars begins the work in a very isolated sense and grows in passion and longing as is progresses, exploring how our desires and love for someone can affect us so emotionally and how powerful it can be.
II. Seize the heavens...in time is a 2 part movement that begins as a person's hopeless despair, feeling that they will never get back who it is they lost. This builds into an apotheosis where the feelings of despair bloom and erupt; afterwards the music calms down and leads to the second more hopeful section as the person gathers themselves and tries to reassure themselves of the situation.
III. ...my final breath is the movement of peace where the person finally feels settled with their longing and comes to embrace the hope they thought they'd lost. This all progresses until we get to the last sigh and release of emotion, ending the work.
I want to thank Abi for allowing me to use her work as inspiration and a basis for mine, and I sincerely hope and wish that this music accurately portrays the vision she had seen when composing her poem.
- Composer
Of Love's Wait - Partial Premiere Recording - UTSA Recital Hall