Vivian Fung is collaborating with the Jasper String Quartet, tenor Nicholas Phan, and pianist Myra Huang, on the creation of a new song cycle, Lamenting Earth. The project is a half-evening length song cycle, approximately 30 minutes, for tenor, string quartet, and piano. The work centers around poet Claire Wahmanholm’s prize-winning poem “O,” which took second place at the Academy of American Poets’ inaugural Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize. The poem is described by the judges as “an original and powerful evocation, using a single letter of the alphabet to name the wonders that are at risk of being no more…The voice is prophetic and unrelenting: a lament, an elegy, and a clarion call to action!”
