America

America was written in a hurry; the urgency of such an inspiring proposal from conductor Julien Bénichou, for his Accord Chamber Orchestra.
I chose to set to music a powerful poem by Claude Mac Kay entitled America, also celebrating in its own way my first visit to this great country. Mac Kay (1889-1948), who
was born in Jamaica and became an American, also traveled to France, where he met Aimé Césaire. He is one of those great black-American poets whose verses I also wanted
to sing.
The poem struck me as powerful, lyrical, epic… everything I love. I wanted to pay an amused tribute to the repetitive music so characteristic of a style born across the Atlantic,
while setting the two soloists in resonance in a cadenza leading to the final progression. I also decided to have the title sung and the name of the poem spoken at the end.
America works in successive, swelling waves, evoking the very paradox of Mc Kay’s poem, whose counterpart, entitled Africa, seems to me to have to follow both musically