Orchestration

mezzo-soprano and piano

Duration

3 minutes

Commissioned by/Premiere

Commissioned and premiered by Sasha Cooke and Kirill Kuzmin at the Davies Symphony Hall, presented by the San Francisco Symphony, on January 30, 2022 in her program “How do I find you“.

Score

Purchase from Project Schott New York

Listen

“Everything Will Be Okay” is featured on Sasha Cooke’s album “How do I find you“, which is available on all platforms.

Note

Everything Will Be Okay was written at the behest of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. I’ve long admired her singing, particularly her devotion to lyricism and clarity, and I tried to choose a text that would suit those talents. I chose the poem of the same name by songwriter and poet John K. Samson (of the band The Weakerthans), who inspired my earlier Liminal Highway. Like Sasha’s singing, John’s writing is clear and simple, as well as gently humorous. My composition honors their talents; I aimed for simplicity to let their skill shine through.

Text

It’s always surprising, this sense
of relief. When you kiss me
unexpectedly, I’m reminded of
the time I left a shoe-box containing
ten or eleven thousand dollars on a
coffee table in a hotel lobby in Northern Italy.
I was between floors in the elevator,
staring at my reflection knowing something
was missing when I remembered what was,
and pushed every button and rolled through
the doors, sprinted hallways in search of the
universal symbol for stairs, barreled
down six flights, and found it
waiting there, untouched,
and haloed by the light
of late-afternoon.

– John K. Samson from Everything Will Be Okay.

Press

“Everything Will Be Okay” by Christopher Cerrone finds Cooke singing with shimmering delicacy building to a remarkable climax.

M.L. Rantala, Hyde Park Herald