"Aisling" is the fruit of a loving collaboration between me and my friend Maria Milenic. A passionate musician and a powerhouse of mezzo-soprano, Maria also has the beautiful endeavour of writing poetry. As a poet, her voice is original, raw and personal, yet with a delicate touch of subtlety. When she showed me her poem entitled "Aisling", I was captivated by the story of a girl dreaming about love and lamenting her disillusion - a story that was at once too small and too universal. While the imageries are subtle and intimate, I nonetheless sensed great drama in the stark contrast between how beautiful the dream of love is, and the heartbreak from the dream being shattered. As the composer, I sought to capture the delicacy and purity of the vision, and explore the emotional depth of the text with its passions of joy and bleak dispair.

​

Central to my mission of setting the text to song was to faithfully translate the personal and raw tone of the poem, and there would be few better ways to achieve this than to be earnestly personal myself. The result is an attempt to engage in my favourite techniques and vocabularies - lyricism, romanticism, and the exploration of colour through richness of pitch and harmony. I particularly enjoyed the challenge of marrying the rich, at-times quasi-Mahlerian romanticism and contemporary sensibilities from my own personal handling of pitch materials.

​

"Aisling" was commissioned by Maria Milenic as the first of a song cycle.​​​​​​