Claudia Riiff Finseth

I have been fortunate enough to have some composers use my poems as lyrics.

 The first was Sara Glick, an amazing musician and a fine compser.  We shared a friend, Jim Holloway, who was killed in a random act of violence.  I wrote a sonnet for Jim, and Sara decided to set it to music. She chose to create an art song for baritone, flute and organ.   Our partnership continued from there.  She would read through my poetry notebook until she “heard music.”  In that way, she composed Glimpses, a set of three songs for women’s chorus.  The last piece Sara composed before she died, way too young, of cancer, is For All the Beloveds, an art piece for mixed chorus.

Mrs. Barbara Poulshock recently took the same sonnet I had written for Jim Holloway, “Silence hangs where once your music soared,” and set it to music for women’s chorus for the Bremerton-based group Lyrica, directed by LeeAnne Campos.

I hope to eventually figure out how to have audio of these songs on this website, so you can enjoy them and chorus directors can purchase them for use by their ensembles.