In 2024, I was selected to participate in Choral Arts Initiative’s PREMIERE|Project Festival as a Composition Fellow. The experience culminated in the premiere of my piece, “There is sweet music here.” After sharing that Edward Elgar’s setting was a big inspiration in that piece, a friend who attended the premiere suggested I set more reflections of classic English part songs. My setting of “The Blue Bird” is a reflection on Charles Villiers Stanford’s setting of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge’s text. The piece features multiple soloists over sustained long note passages, painting the bird flying over the still lake. The middle passage is slower, with the image of a clear blue sky with moments of wind blowing. The piece ends with fragments of the opening solo, conveying the last glimpse of the bird before it disappears at the horizon. The piece is the fourth of a five-movement cycle, English Vignettes.