U-M Chamber Choir Premieres Craig Hella Johnson's "Song from the Road"

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A joint commission on behalf of Chorus America, “Song from the Road” is an anthem composed by Craig Hella Johnson, one of today’s leading choral conductors in the United States.

In addition to conducting Conspirare and the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati, Johnson is also a composer and arranger. Of “Song from the Road,” Johnson has written: “More often than not, we live lives of forgetting—forgetting who we are, forgetting our deepest, simplest
essence. Embedded in this piece is a gentle call to remembrance—to remember our original happiness, our original essence.”


Long on this journey
Long in these shadows
Far from the only home
Low all our hoping
Deep the undoing
Just for this forsaken road

Voices we dream of
Echoes remember
We all together there
Heaven was once
Our song to be singing
Hearts’ every word
In wonder and joy

I am how your heart discovers
All the hopes that sleep in you
I am every silence calling
I am Fountain I am Meadow
I am every secret door

Sing your ships into their harbors
Sing them bring them heal them home
Murmur every holy river
I am Blossom I am Harvest
I am leaves around your soul

Come from the shadows, into the gleaming,
Dawn of the day in us;
Open our lives to everything growing—
How shall we say this grace?
World we are watching, world we are,
Keep us in life with you.
How do we answer? How do we know?
Love brings us closer. Mercy us home.

I am how your heart discovers
All the hopes that sleep in you
I am every silence calling
I am Fountain I am Meadow
I am every secret door

Sing your ships into their harbors
Sing them bring them heal them home
Murmur every holy river
I am Blossom I am Harvest
I am leaves around your soul

Love brings us closer. Mercy us home.

Home…

Michael Dennis Browne (b. 1940)