Category: Vocal Music / Art Song
Instrumentation: voice, piano
Text / Source: Poems by Linda Pastan
Publisher: North Star Music

Skywriting is a song cycle for voice and piano setting poems by Linda Pastan, who also chose the title for the cycle. Written for Jessica Satava, the work brings together four songs—There Are Poems, Spring, The Imperfect Paradise, and Why are your poems so dark?—each engaging a distinct poetic idea through Baxter’s lyrical approach to vocal writing.

The cycle moves from inward artistic reflection to seasonal lightness, theological imagination, and a broader meditation on darkness and joy. There Are Poems laments the unwritten ideas that never reach the page, while Spring offers a charming response to the arrival of spring after a long winter. The Imperfect Paradise imagines how God might have felt had creation stopped after the fifth day, before humankind appeared. Why are your poems so dark? acknowledges both darkness and light, sadness and happiness, as essential parts of lived experience.

With its clear poetic focus and intimate scoring, Skywriting is well suited for vocal recitals, contemporary art song programs, and themed concerts centered on poetry, creativity, nature, faith, and emotional contrast. The cycle calls for expressive text delivery, flexible characterization across the four songs, and a singer-pianist partnership attentive to Baxter’s balance of tonal clarity, melodic directness, and contemporary harmonic color.