Seafarer Press | Elizabeth Alexander, composer

LEVEL
  E = Easy
ME = Moderately Easy
  M = Medium
MD = Moderately Difficult
  D = Difficult


Adult Women Men Youth Children by theme/style by difficulty

They Have Freckles Everywhere: Seven Pieces of Me! (E. Alexander and Hall Elementary School students)

SSAA, piano - SEA-076-00 - $7.00/copy
16 minutes - M
Commissioned by Women in Harmony, artistic director Catherine Beller-McKenna

Seven wildly diverse musical portraits of our bodies' parts and parcels, based on children's poems about their favorite body parts.  An aural and visual celebration of our physical nature, full of thoughtfulness, playfulness, and good natured "genre hopping."

(Individual movements may be performed separately.) Score

V. My Mouth - Recording (excerpt)
VI. My Fingers - Recording (excerpt)
VII. My Cheeks - Recording (excerpt)
(performed by Lamar H.S. Choir - Women ~ Gail Land, conductor)
They Have Freckles Everywhere Music by Elizabeth Alexander
Lyrics adapted by the composer from poems by students in the Many Rivers Program at Hall Elementary School (Portland, ME)

1. My Eyes

My eyes are like an oval and an almond,
My eyes are like stones in the road,
My eyes are like a pool of water,
Ocean pieces glint in the sun like shining sapphire spheres.
Travel into two worlds of black.
Travel down into the depths of wonder, into my eyes.
My eyes are like fish swimming in a pond,
My eyes, warm like a blanket, cold as ice.

2. My Birthmark

My birthmark is
one lonely dot
on the bottom
of my foot.

3. My Legs

You always have them right underneath you.
Right underneath you, you have your legs.

I love my legs because I can wiggle them
and bend them right when I want to.
They can leap and run,
and jump on a bed,
pick me up from the ground.

They swing
back and forth
swinging high and low.

I love to dance.

I love my legs because I can wiggle them
and bend them right when I want to.
Legs are what you use for walking,
kicking through the water,
playing on the playground.

I love my legs
for they can run and walk
    and wiggle and bend
        and shake and kick
             and swing and leap and dance:

My legs!

4. My Brain

My brain
Is an endless maze
A canoe floating down a quiet river.

Enter into the mists of thought,
Venture in to the distance,
into belief, desire, suffering, joy, pain
into wonder, into dreams —

My brain
Is an endless maze.

5. My Mouth

My mouth.

Blurting out
Sound.
A sea of
Sound.

Enough
to fill the soul.
Enough
to fill the world.

My mouth!

6. My Fingers

My fingers are short.
Very short.

7. My Cheeks

They have freckles everywhere.
My cheeks are very soft,
And they have freckles everywhere.
And my cheeks puff up,
And they have freckles everywhere.

Lyrics Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Alexander.
View and play the score Scorch was designed by the folks who built Sibelius notation software, as a simple way to allow Sibelius scores to become webpages.  Despite its slightly ominous name, Scorch is free, is not excessively large (approx. 1 MB), and does not do anything demonic like put you on a mailing list or affect other computer programs. - E.A.

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