Bird Song

The story of how I met Jessica Burko.

I was a student at Eastman, and she was a student at RIT.  She and three friends decided to form a quartet of singers, The Sirens.  Before they made it big, they contacted me for voice lessons.  For graduate students with busy lives, they were surprisingly dedicated.  Several of them took individual lessons as well as the group workshops, and Jessie was one of them.  She has a sultry voice and was eager to improvise and interpret the standards, among them Angel Eyes and God Bless the Child.  The Sirens eventually disbanded, but Jessie's and my friendship has remained consistent through two marriages, a divorce, and at least ten moves!

I was lucky to be Jessie's model for her Master's thesis.  I also modeled for her when she visited me in New Haven.  It was a kick to see my hand or my profile integrated in her work, sometimes hanging on her living room walls.  While browsing through her web site I found a piece from 2007 entitled Bird Song.

There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one.  Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine.  And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outrank the lark and the nightingale.  One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in the heaven smiles.  For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain... Or so says the legend.

The sheet music is written for solo piano.  The grace notes in the soprano melody line lend a chirpy, happy, pastoral feel, like a walk in the woods on a sunny day.  The left hand keeps the beat in three, an inexorable march of time.  The music is cut, interrupted, by the scissors; stitched back together to the right, and torn where my face peeks out, searching, looking for the thorn tree.