Program Note:

Stray Sods was written for cellist Amanda Gookin, as part of her Forward Music Project. Some of Forward Music Project's goals are to raise awareness of women's issues, to support the work of living composers of all backgrounds, and to discover better ways to connect a community through art. Amanda encouraged each of the commissioned composers to think about a female issue we would like to focus on and explore in our works. The obvious choice for me was to somehow explore the issue of reproductive rights in Ireland as part of my piece. Up until 2018, abortion was illegal in Ireland unless it occurred as a result of a medical intervention to save the life of the mother. When a woman's life was not considered at risk, a termination in Ireland carried a 14-year prison sentence. Because of this, over 12 women per day traveled by sea or air to the U.K. to access medical care for an abortion, sometimes alone and in secrecy. I was thinking about the wealth of old folk songs and lullabies sung from the female perspective of missing and fretting for the husband who is working at sea. I felt that the act of traveling by air or by sea, alone, to another country for a procedure with associations of such sorrow, deserved its own textless melody, a lullaby-mourning song hybrid for something intangible.