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Mixed Choir
LGBTQ+ Music

Chosen Family (2023)

for SATB (divisi) choir, a cappella

Text: John Barton (b. 1957)
Duration: 21 minutes
Difficulty: 3/4

Commissioned by Chronos Vocal Ensemble (Jordan Van Biert, dir.) with financial support from the Edmonton Community Foundation. First performed by Chronos Vocal Ensemble in January 2024.

Chosen Family is a four-movement choral cycle adapting poetry by Victoria-based poet John Barton. The text is taken from his most recent book Lost Family, a memoir in sonnets. The four poems recall important people in his life, both friends and family, who have since passed away. Together, they form a narrative of life, love, and coping with loss through the support of our chosen families.

Inside the Frame remembers James Gordaneer, a well-known artist in Victoria. Following a stroke in 2011, James was wheelchair-bound but continued to paint until his final days. The music transitions from quiet solitude into a rollicking sea shanty, celebrating the liberation he felt through his art. Oxygen recounts the final time John visited his favourite aunt Barbara in hospital. Despite the bittersweet emotions in retrospect, the music is filled with joy and tender moments, celebrating the beauty of her character. What She Gave Me describes the birthday cakes John received in the mail each year from his mother, meant to bridge the divide between them as adults. The music is highly colourful and rhythmic, using vivid text painting to bring these gifts to life. The final movement, Chosen Family, begins with an extended image of eagles coasting through the summer sky as friends are gathered down below, sharing food and drink together. Weaving together moments and themes from across the entire work, the piece ends by recognizing the connection we all share—between people, in nature, and across the Earth.

Chosen Family is dedicated to the memory of James Gordaneer (1933-2016), Barbara Preston (1931-2016), Nancy Barton (1922-2014), and Eva Wynand (1940-2019).

Click here to see the complete score.

The audio below is from the premiere performance by Chronos Vocal Ensemble (Jordan Van Biert, dir.) in January 2024.

Full Text

I.  Inside the Frame
Kept to one floor, he rolls his chair from bed
To easel, weekdays spent behind windows
Houseflies walk across, the light-torn, rain-bled
Squares of glass they lift from, blankly going

Where he cannot, grandchildren in and out
Wife opening her florist’s shop, daughter
Attentive, busy, wheeling him around
Time an island trapped by shallow water

He paints his mornings out of, each canvas
A sail catching what flails inside a frame
He turns windward to make bell out, nexus
Of what could albatross the picture plane

Unbound by able brushstrokes, an old man’s
Youthful sightlines stretched life-sized, a life’s span.

II.  Oxygen
We were close. My iPhone scrolling us through

Photos I took to show you, a last glimpse
In your final days, though we had no clue
Or would not see or must have look askance.

I did, at least. In your hospital room
Chair drawn up to your bed. Oxygen tank
Hung overhead, not unlike a vacuum

Cleaner canister, you breathing in banks
Of purifying air; cheerful, loving
While affirming the flora you knew well

Camas, grape hyacinth, dogwood, quince—spring
Weeks old, as if its efflorescent spell
When stemmed, could carry forward still; grateful

For your poised life with us; as I’m grateful.

III.  What She Gave Me
Their arrival forthright as a stopwatch
Every March slid inside my bachelor
Apartment’s milk chute by whistling postmen
Boxes my mother winged over divides

Mountains would incline between us, candied
Peel and cherries drunk on brandy or rum
Eggs beaten in after siftings of flour
Baked, then swathed in bubble wrap and dispatched

Uniced, candles if unpacked set aflame
The years I’d blow out seldom passed alone
Consumed in thick slices before they went

Stale, my Murphy bed springing back unmade
Inside the wall on mornings stomached prone
The crumbs scattered from two plates not misspent.

IV.  Chosen Family
Coasting above the sun-drenched sequoias
Anchored in your backyard, wingtips touching

Shadows turning—skydivers with hands joined
Who’ve yet to come to ground—the thermals quaffed

Pouring them through ellipses, tipped spirals
Uncoiled and rewound, feathers wind-tethered

Kaleidoscopic when light-struck, a braille
The eye runs across, the air read lower

Down where we sit brimming, gazing up thrilled
Your table holding us to a circle

Buoyant with cheeses and glasses of chilled
Tequila, words unplanned, luffed vertical—

A prayer held in beaks of like-minded steel
The Earth spinning, four eagles a sun wheel.

Text from “Lost Family: A Memoir” © John Barton, 2020.
Published by Signal Editions/Véhicule Press. Used with permission.