Episode Details

This beautiful recording of nocturnal crickets in Ghana opened up the night to me - I wanted to create a piece that had something of the warmth of a long summer evening, gazing up at the infinite sky as the crickets sing. The arpeggios grow and develop, with more instruments entering throughout the piece, representing the growth of the cricket chorus as more and more insect voices join the song each night.

The title is from an Emily Dickinson poem, "The cricket sang":

The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon. 

The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,   
To stay as if, or go. 

A vastness, as a neighbour, came,
— A wisdom without face or name, 
A peace, as hemispheres at home,
—    And so the night became.