Premiered at Tuesday Night New Music in New England Conservatory’s Williams Hall on April 8, 2025. World premiere.
To be featured at the Nancy Schoen & Matthew Tirona Joint Recital in Tufts Distler Performance Hall on February 21, 2026.
PROGRAM NOTES: I stumbled across Jessie Redmon Fauset’s striking poem “La Vie C’est La Vie” last summer and instantly knew I wanted to set it for voice and piano. With its exploration and juxtaposition of the beauty of nature and unrequited love, each of the five stanzas marks a distinct section in my piece, delineated by changes in tempo, dynamics, tonality, and emotion. I am honored to highlight the literary work of Fauset, a female African-American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator, whose position as a literary editor of The Crisis, an NAACP magazine, allowed her to become an important contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Huge thanks to Nancy Schoen and Lingbo Ma for rehearsing and bringing this piece to life!
Matthew Tirona, composer 