Graphite welcomes composer Katerina Gimon to our Marketplace!

Katerina Gimon’s music is filled with evocative colors and extended choral techniques that are both effective and accessible. Artful drawings and graphic representations of sound provide motivating portals into her musical ideas. Despite the innovative notation, Gimon’s music is readily accessible. She says, “graphic elements with images give a sense of what I want from singers. It provides something extra, a form of inspiration. Anything I write is achievable by someone with a voice box.”

Gimon’s “A Path to Hope,” for mixed voices, is a beautiful example of her musical fingerprint. In three short movements, she uses spoken voices, body percussion, and other extended techniques to express the many difficulties of recent events. This music will be felt deeply by singers everywhere, and give a voice to those who have been silenced. This piece is available for SATB, SSA, and TTB.

A Path to Hope is a set of three short works drawing inspiration from reflections written by Canadian choral music educators early in the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a collaborative commissioning project called Sonic Timelapse Project. Each movement was composed as a short response to a specific idea, emotion, or question found within one or more of the reflections as part of my own journey to finding hope in uncertain times. Each work includes short spoken sections featuring fragments from or inspired by the material in these written reflections. However, although this piece was born during a unique time in our history its themes of voicelessness, overcoming fear, and seeking hope, are timeless and universal.

Composed entirely for body percussion the first movement, Without Voice, is a loose play on the morse code spelling of the word “voiceless” and represents the struggle to find a place or ‘voice’ in a silent world where no one is listening.

The second movement, The Fear, is inspired by Canadian poet Pat Lowther’s work of the same name. Sung to a short, repeated mantra, this song is about building the strength to face fear itself by learning to accept the constancy of change and in doing so, embracing growth instead.

The final movement, Believe, is a brief yet potent response to the uncertainty of the future and serves as a reminder of our own resilience and the power of hope.

Check out the score here: https://graphitepublishing.com/product/a-path-to-hope-satb/