Eric Stark and Augusta discuss the collaboration

TEXT BY RUMI

O’ DAY ARISE!
O’ day, arise!
Shine your light, the atoms are dancing.
Thanks to him the universe is dancing,
overcome with ecstasy, free from body and mind.

---

FALL IN LOVE AND STAY IN LOVE
Fall in love and do it now!
When you dance illuminations alight.
Endless love shine bright.

We are all dancing in the light.

All blazing,
Give your heart a star!
Sun!

Alight heart!
Fly!
Your heart and atoms shine.
Every cell flies about the world.

Take wings and do it now!

---

I TELL YOU: SUNS EXIST
I’ll whisper in your ear where their dance is leading them.

Puzzled and drunken to the ray of light, all atoms in the air are dancing.
They seem insane.

Shine like the universe is yours.
Seek those that fan your flames.

Love sets your life on fire.
I tell you: suns exist.

I am sky-bound.
Love calls.

Come, come, whoever you are.
Don’t ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love.

---

I AM AN ATOM YOU ARE LIKE THE COUNTENANCE OF THE SUN
I am an atom;
you are like the countenance of the Sun.
I am a patient of Love;
you are like medicine for me.
Without wings, without feathers,
I fly about looking for you.

I have become a rose petal
and you are like the wind for me.
Take me for a ride.

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

Love calls – everywhere and always.
We’re sky-bound.

---

WALK OUT LIKE SOMEONE SUDDENLY BORN INTO LIGHT
Walk out like someone suddenly born into light.

All seek separately the many faces of love that shine and take flight.

Glide!

Sparks come from the heart-well.

Ablaze!
Ray of love.

I’ll whisper in your ear where their dance is leading them.

---

AS PIECES OF CLOUD DISSOLVE IN SUNLIGHT
Take wings and do it now!

Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.
Do it now!

Dancing star
Shooting star
A puzzle
Sunlight
A thousand

A million
A billion

Stars taking wings
All fly and rise
Evolving.

Set your life revolving eternal love.

Your heart knows the way;
Run in that direction!

Fall in love and do it now!
Stay there!

Every cell is taking wings and flies about the world.
The light which shines is bright.

Take flight
Your universe is born.

This is how I would die
into the love I have for you:
As pieces of cloud
dissolve in sunlight.

---

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE?
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.

Do you know what you are?

You are a manuscript of a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.

This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.
Love shines.

Become the sky.

I am sky bound.

---

BECOME THE SKY
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.

The light which shines in the eye is really the light from the heart.

---

YOU BEGIN TO WHIRL
O’ day, arise!
Fall in love and stay in love.

When you dance the whole universe dances.
All the realms spin around in endless celebration.

Your soul alight.
Rise.
Take wings and fall in love.
Shine bright light.

Dancing.
You begin to whirl.
You fall in love.

Selected Reviews

Rita Kohn, NUVO May 1, 2023 Augusta Read Thomas’ Toward a Secret Sky took wing April 28-29 at the Hilbert Circle Theatre
"The Indianapolis Symphonic Choir and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra jubilantly premiered Augusta Read Thomas’ Toward a Secret Sky, resonating hopefulness at a time of escalating crisis on personal and community levels worldwide. The music, as a continuous nine-part embrace of selected passages from the poetry of 13th Century Moslem mystic and poet Rumi [“The Roman”], invites us to embrace LOVE along a lifetime of cyclical daily journeys.

Thomas’ musicality is impeccably visionary. Even without the text at hand [there was no print program with notes and translations at the concert; one had to source into a smartphone], it was clear to me, from the opening fanfare, that I was in the moment of sunrise and, as the music progressed, I was journeying along a 24-hour pilgrimage alongside sun, moon, stars, planets, winds and clouds, storms and calm, change and sameness, adventure and security.

The movie in my mind was transcending stagnation, experiencing Read Thomas’ nine-arc segmentation representing Earth’s pilgrimage, with us in tow, dawn to day to dusk to night to dawn; an adventure open to me if I was up to an embracing challenge. Wherever we are, we rise into the sun and then descend into darkness when the moon cycles away from our visibility. With orchestra and choir, we are enfolded in an encompassing soundscape, “From the highest to the lowest possible pitches, and everything between. The opening fanfare simultaneously sounds all seven diatonic pitches, exploding into the exuberant choral exhortation, “Arise, O Day!”

“Your task is not to seek for love,” advises Rumi, “but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

We are earthling passengers in pursuit of ‘a secret sky’. What exactly is a ‘secret sky?” I conjure up what comes to mind. There is something to be said in favor of memorizing poets. “This is Love: to fly/ toward a secret sky,” I pull up from the Rumi drawer that opens in my mind’s storage. “First to let go of life…to take a step without feet,” posits Rumi. But we need balance; on the other side of unnecessary risk, avoid too much caution, and be willing to share what is learned from seeking even when not fully succeeding.

I am recalling Daedalus and Icarus, whose lack of caution plummets him into the sea. Gain and loss. Daedalus, the father, is bereft, but he must continue onward.

Rumi teaches, “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.” Hubris, excessive pride… Loss, excessive grief…we are forewarned, both deter us from a useful life. Daedalus mourns and moves forward, not merely a sighing ‘on.’ Hope need not die.

’Love,’ as the mirroring of ‘evol-ve,’ invites us to be open to possibility, to engage with ongoing progression, to not stop at a static state of being. We are the change within the process of the wholeness of the universe, conceived as a progression of interrelated phenomena. Read Thomas, in drawing us in and thrusting us through the evolutionary statics and dynamics of space and time, enlarges our understanding of ‘a day.’ “Toward a Secret Sky” is sonically rapturous, emotionally ecstatic.

Listening on April 28, I am equally drawn into the memory of Wap Shing, who was the Spiritual Leader of the Miami of Indiana Tribe of Indiana in the 1980s when I moved to Indiana. From his childhood in Holland forward to his sojourn in Indiana, at the place of The Seven Pillars [Peru Indiana], Wap Shing started each day as a fanfare akin to Read Thomas’ opening seven diatonic pitches. Wap Shing described how at day break, at sunrise, he and his parents made an offering to Four Winds and to Mother Earth and to Father Sky, “And then we thought about one another, in a widening circle, for those people who are in trouble and in need.”

Composing when the unknown aspects of COVID-19 plunged us into fear—and for some into creating less than helpful scenarios, Read Thomas chose a path to hopefulness. Listening to the music, I was recalling Wap Shing’s spiritual connection to place and time to his awe at another daybreak; “You feel, here is another day, and I haven’t deserved it at all. In fact, everything is sacrificing for it: the sun is coming up; the plants are there; the flowers are blooming; the birds chirping. That’s all a gift; you feel like a king or a queen…all that, for me? And then, What is my part in this because I, too, am part of that wheel, and I’m also part of not just receiving but giving. That, I think, is by far and away the most important thing because the Grandfather can take away everything….It’s the good and the evil, or seeming evil, that are part of the circle…” [Find this oral history in Always A People, Indiana University Press, 1997]

Personhood and society; Read Thomas writes large, wide, and deep, offering space not only to instruments we usually expect but expanding to include a vibraphone, crotales, cymbals, wood block, tambourine, a troupe of triangles, celeste, and piano, along with a small village of voices. LOVE in all its manifestations dances its way through some forty minutes, defining the rainbow—a promise from the Divine to mortals, who continue to cling to hope as the raft in times of trial.

Visiting with Kyle Long on his WFYI-FM radio show, Read Thomas alluded to Rumi as ‘having the most beautiful, forward-looking, eloquent, poetic imagery. He speaks a lot about love in his writings…of cosmic love, and the depth of love, and the importance of love…I wanted to write something optimistic, but also rich with these beautiful themes and gorgeous words.”

Read Thomas structured the work around nine Rumi texts that “Have, for lack of a better word, that have perfumes in them. I wanted the music to set a different scene, but I built transitions between them, and it’s played without a pause.”

The title of Read Thomas’ composition circles to a 2019 self-help book by Kim Roberts, “Toward a Secret Sky: Creating Your Own Modern Pilgrimage.” Described as “a guidebook for modern pilgrims who are searching for encouragement in following their commitment to a spiritual path” and placing Kim Roberts “as a friendly guide, helping people navigate the exhilarating journey of a spiritual seeker,” this book gained accolades for “the path of the most sacred journey we will ever take.” [per a review by Nancy Levin, author of “Jump . . . and Your Life Will Appear.”]

There’s also a 2017 young adult paranormal book with the same title. Mary Amato, on https://www.thrumsociety.com/rumi-chants/, offers ‘a series of chants/songs based on Rumi, leading off with his ’secret sky’ quest.

The poet Mallarmé, in the 19th century, was patiently developing this complex technique of seeking a secret sky, reflecting on his basic belief that in the apparent emptiness of space, an ideal world lies concealed—that infinity can be conjured up from the void. An obvious variation on this theme is that eternal life can come from death, that when a man is reduced to nothingness, he can nevertheless live on in some way.

“The profound beauty and empathy of love” is the gift of Augusta Read Thomas to us in the here and now. I await another opportunity to hear this superb performance of a provocative new work and, hopefully, acquire a cd so I can listen as often as I like."

Jay Harvey, JAY HARVEY UPSTAGE April 29, 2023 Augusta Read Thomas: A rare focus on a living composer's new music highlights this season
"…Indianapolis audiences have thus had ample opportunity to become familiar with Thomas' bright, detailed, sometimes ecstatic manner of composition for large forces. In "Toward a Secret Sky," using texts from the medieval Sufi poet Rumi, Thomas has come up with musical settings, in nine movements without interruption, that strive to capture a spirituality reassuring everyone of its permanent, universal availability. Love is the keynote, the self is a powerful vehicle to transcendence, and what the composer calls "cosmic grace" made a unique communication of such a message available to her, and thence to all attentive listeners.

As heard Friday night, the main challenge to such attention was scoring that forged a pervasive unity of chorus and orchestra, as if the singers were another section of the orchestra. The well-trained choir, under the guidance of Eric Stark, also the conductor of these concerts, seems to have mastered the difficulty of its assignment.

High resonance shone in "O day arise! Shine your light, the atoms are dancing." How could it not, with such a text to elevate the music? "I Tell You: Suns Exist," the second section, picks up the dance imagery, with fanfares to highlight the exaltation. It soon became a rare joy, as well as a landmark, to hear such clear lines as "Don't ask anyone about Love, ask Love about love." When the women began the next section with the soft insinuation of "I am an atom," I began to count milestones in this high-flown journey.

Rhythmic and textural variety makes distinction between the sections, which helps listeners track the progress. In the middle, Thomas has fashioned her own apotheosis of Arnold Schoenberg's sound-color melody in the 1912 "Five Orchestra Pieces," in which changes of timbre sustain and subtly alter a long line. She's a virtuoso of this sort of thing, and the orchestra made a proper spectacle of it.

In addition to brief solos elsewhere in the orchestra and some arresting instrumental combinations, the four percussionists are crucial, as they were in "Sun Dance." They are mainly involved with mallet and tuned instruments (tubular bells aptly underline the announcement that "Love is a cloud that scatters pearls"). They contribute much to the impression of fractal imagery in musical dress, pointing to hard-to-perceive motes in the middle distance of the Rumi universe. Peeks into Christmas stockings of enlightenment are promised, and Stark and his large gathering of musicians did their best to provide revelations."

DOODLE OF THE MAP OF FORM AS DRAWN BY THE COMPOSER

To obtain examination or performance material for this
Augusta Read Thomas work, please contact Nimbus Music Publishing.