Between Tides
For SATB Choir a Cappella
Recorded live in concert at Bethesda Lutheran Church, New Haven, CT, on April 7, 2024.
Bethesda Choir
Isaac Lee - Conductor
Concert: Living Between the Tides - A benefit concert supporting Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) of New Haven, CT.
PROGRAM NOTES
Between Tides explores the human impact of climate change and the challenge of climate equity by amplifying first-hand accounts of climate refugees displaced from the Ganges Delta region of Bangladesh and eastern India.
People of this region are blameless victims of our changing climate—more frequent and violent storms, widespread drought, crop failures, and rising sea levels—despite having done little to cause it. In their words, one finds striking resilience and hope in the face of inequity, inaction, and destruction.
Between Tides contrasts dark with light harmonies, consonance with dissonance, to evoke this dichotomy in climate refugees’ experiences. A solo soprano voice emerges to personify refugees’ first-person accounts in dialog with the chorus as the voice of the community, heightening this contrast. Between Tides ends with a stirring plea in the hope of inspiring urgent action addressing climate change before more lives are lost.
Between Tides was commissioned by the Bethesda Music Series of the Bethesda Lutheran Church in New Haven, Connecticut, for a concert to benefit Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). It is dedicated to all those displaced by climate change around the world.
10 minutes | SATB Choir a cappella | 2024
Libretto by Martin Hebel.
Languages: English, Arabic
Libretto
We lived on the riverbank beneath green trees.
Our days were bright, the delta teamed with life.
The fishermen plied the water, ferries darting about.
We tended paddies between the tide’s ebbs and flows,
where the river meets the sea.
When I was young, we brought fresh water from the stream where we played.
As the sun sank low, it seemed to brush the tree tops.
I watched as the boats lined the riverbank, returning with their catch.
My mother scaled the fish and our family gathered,
where the river meets the sea.
I remember the day our village vanished.
Suddenly the sky grew dark and heavy with rain.
The narrow river swelled to a raging torrent, trees bending in the wind.
In minutes, the surge tore through our home and swept my family away.
Everything became a graveyard, water in every direction.
Now we are adrift, left floating in the middle,
where the river meets the sea.
We sense something grave is happening around us.
We don’t know what our future holds.
The land we tilled for generations is shrinking;
Salt water poisons what’s left of our fields.
Many people have gone, displacement and death everywhere.
Only stones, mud, and memories are left,
where the river meets the sea.
We live in fear on the riverbank beneath withered, silent trees.
No fishermen ply the water now. No ferries dart about.
Though we must go, we do not want to leave.
Our past, our memories, our ancestors are here,
where the river meets the sea.
Remember us; remember my daughters, my son.
There is still time, still hope if we act now.
Let our village be the last lost to rising tides.
To our home and those we lost, ma'a salamah, with peace we leave you.
We lived where the river meets the sea.
Martin Hebel
Written 2024
