Premiere: Songs for the Spring of Waiting will be available for our listening March 16

 Available from March 16 onward,  we welcome the premiere of songs reflecting our reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic, Watch for the posting at YouTube.com/classicaltuesdays

Join Tacoma Poet laureate emerita Josie Emmons Turner and composer Gregory Youtz as they discuss and then premiere “Songs for the Spring of Waiting.”  Josie’s response to the pandemic shutdown a year ago was an explosion of poems that ranged from gardening to students to thinking about the poet Walt Whitman and his response to crisis. Greg’s response to the poems was to set them to music as documents of this unique time.  Soprano CyndiaSieden, mezzo-soprano Soon Cho and pianist Oksana Ezhokina will premiere the five songs in a way that is also a document of these times- socially distanced and online!

Cyndia Sieden, soprano
Oksana Ezhokina, piano


Soon Cho, mezzo soprano

Gregory Youtz, composer








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Classical Tuesdays in Old Town Tacoma: a conversation between poet and composer

Our next Classical Tuesdays in Old Town Tacoma event, a conversation between 2 artists, is available from February 8 onward at https://www.YouTube.com/classicaltuesdays.

Listen in as Greg Youtz, composer and professor of music at Pacific Lutheran University, and Zhang Er, poet, librettist, and professor at The Evergreen State College, discuss their collaboration on creating an opera - or two!

Together they produced, in 2016, an opera  titled "Fiery Jade" that tells of the lives of women across time and around the world, struggling in times of upheaval. And now, in 2020-21, they have again collaborated to produce a second opera titled "Tacoma Method" which portrays the 1855 expulsion of Chinese laborers, businessmen and families from Tacoma, Washington, led by the mayor. Perhaps our artists will discuss the recurrence of similar issues and events throughout history, especially as observed again in recent times.  

Zhang Er, poet, librettist


Greg has stated: I feel my composing is … in service to social/cultural ideas that I think need to be discussed. Although I respect the view that art can be a safe, attractive antidote to the troubles of the world, I am usually more interested in art as a medium for discussion of great ideas, whether they be humorous, deadly serious, or simply wonderfully interesting.

Greg Youtz, composer