The Dreams of the Dreamer

Composer: David Walters

Words from Composer:

This brief, but heartrending work is about how we mark the passage of time in dreams and songs. Georgia Douglas Johnson’s evocative text is captured in phrases of rhapsodic harmony that travel from wailing as loud as possible to barely audible resignation. Though life may be fleeting, dreams and songs, the “life-drops that pass,” show us that it can be rich and full all the same.   

Though she never lived in Harlem and initially studied to be a composer, Johnson is regarded as the foremost female poet of the Harlem Renaissance, largely through her mentorship of younger writers.