Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt

I am right-handed in nearly everything I do--except for baseball, a sport my father taught me as a left-hander himself. I grew up playing wiffle ball in my backyard, my own "rough diamond," begging my dad to play game after game. Of course I wanted to crush the ball out of the park, but my father taught me to focus on the little things, like how to track down a fly ball in center field. I idolized ruthless competitors like Barry Bonds; my father taught me a game of quietude.

So when my former teacher Martin Bresnick introduced me to the poem  "Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt" by David Bottoms, I was drawn to it and hoped to set it one day. I rediscovered it recently when Bottoms passed away. To me, this beautiful poem embodies the unique relationship between many fathers and their children. Have I ever learned "what you were laying down" (a clever reference to the bunt itself)? In particular, I find it moving that the poem itself is a personal sign to the poet's father: "Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap / Let this be the sign / I'm getting a grip on the sacrifice."

In Sign for My Father, I try to capture an elegiac feeling of childhood, as well as the uniquely American nostalgia for the pastime of baseball. This work is dedicated to my father.

This work was premiered by Fleur Barron and the Viano Quartet at Chamber Music Northwest in July 2023.