The piece was most recently done in March 2019 at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts in Philadelphia by the Temple University Choirs and Orchestra, with a featured violin soloist.
But I discovered that sometimes the answer is in your own backyard: walking through the faculty lounge at Curtis one day, I asked Jeanne Minahan, the head of the Liberal Arts Department (who happens to be a poet) if she had anything that I could read.
When I got some books of her poetry in my hands, I knew I had found what I was looking for... a series of poems, that resonated with me, and would provide different emotional settings, as if they were lessons in life arranged like different rooms within a house.
[1]The Singing Rooms has a duration of roughly 37 minutes and is composed in seven movements set to the text of poems by Jeanne Minahan:[1] The work is scored for solo violin, SATB chorus, and an orchestra comprising two flutes, two oboes (2nd doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets (1st doubling piccolo trumpet), three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, two percussionists, and strings.
"[3] Bradley Bambarger of The Star-Ledger compared the work favorably to Higdon's Violin Concerto, despite noting that "it still tends to be melodically anodyne.