HOW CAN YOU

Hola, Peeps! Here are a few details about this piece. Enjoy and let me know if there is any mistake or if you want to talk about a different version for your choir.

The ones for the conductor:

Duration: 4'30''

Voicing/Instrumentation: SA and cello

Available Versions: SATB and cello

Language: English

Premiere: Conspirare - Craig Hella Johnson

Listen/ See the Score: 

The ones for the program:

Program Notes: How Can You is equal parts bold and fragile. As a gay, Latinx, immigrant, I wake up every day to another act of hate, unfair decisions, and irrational laws that deeply affect communities that are already fighting to exist. This piece challenges us to be agents of action and calls out the acts of injustice.

Why is it so difficult for some people to see that they are doing wrong to someone else to please their own needs? And why are we not doing more to stop that from happening. I often ask myself: “How can you sit there and write music when the world is in such a chaotic state? Should you be doing more?”

Writing How Can You is my small part in answering those questions, to help us all find ways we can be kinder to each other. I hope this message resonates with you and you can pass it along before it’s too late for some of us.

Our Latinx, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, female-identifying, and other marginalized communities need us to stand up with them and choose love.

Author: Ryan Heller

Text: How
How can you
How can you not see me
How can you just stand there


How
How?

How can you dismiss my life
How can you look through me
How can you not stand up for me
How can you…

How
How can you?

How can I feel safe
How can you not respect me
How can you believe your God knows best
How can you believe you know what’s best
How can you hear me and not listen

How
How
How can you?!

How can you laugh
How can you choose not to see me
How can you decide for me

How can you?

How can you not respect my life
How can you not see my tears
How can you think I am evil, wicked, nasty, abnormal
How can you say that I would destroy a life

How
How can you
How?

How can you [Insert your questions]

How can I be safe
How?
How can I feel safe

HOW?

How can I make you see me

HOW?

How can we keep asking the same questions?
How can you expect me to keep smiling?
How can I…
How?!

How can we be fine with not doing anything
How can we just stand there
How can we hear the gunshots,
see the bombs falling,

How can we not do more?

How can you think it is not your problem?
How can you ignore my suffering?

How?
How?
How?

HOW CAN YOU?!

How can we move forward
How can we care for one another
How can you stand up for someone
How can we ensure safety
How can we uplift each other
How can you enfold someone in love

How can we

How

HOW?!

Other awesome details we tell people 🙂

Year of Composition: 4'30''

Awards:

More Performances!

• <a href=”https://youtu.be/aI68xZSOrQY?t=2179“>Hear Me Out Part Two (Saturday)</a>
• <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2179&fbclid=IwAR3DjR3jBuLGTRrrocVwHn-tu4KE1TUL1buwQMXH-XLFJlVriGEhY-VAiwY&v=aI68xZSOrQY&feature=youtu.be“>SATB Demo Recording</a>
• <a href=”“></a>