by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 29, 2023
Recently, I’ve been listening to The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy, by American composer Christopher Tin. [Video below] It is an arrangement based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Christina Rossetti. It is sung beautifully by Voces8 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Tin composed this marvelous arrangement as a memorial to various bird species that have been driven to extinction by habit loss, pollution and encroachment. The pieces soar and dive in a powerful rollercoaster of emotion, especially when one has been a student of extinction for as long as I have.
