Range: B3 - G5 (A5) Duration: 7:00
Copyright © 2025 Rosśa Crean/Knight & Thorne Music/ASCAP. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the owner/publisher. Please notify the composer of any performances at rossa@rossacrean.com.
Composer’s Notes
To those lending your voices to this work: These songs began as poems…sharp, messy, defiant…and now they live in your breath, your phrasing, your sound. This collection is not just a performance; it’s a conversation, a protest, a celebration, and sometimes a sigh of exhaustion. It speaks from the margins, from the bathroom lines, from parade routes and half-written histories. It was born in resistance but shaped in joy. You are not just interpreting notes, you’re carrying stories. Stories of those who have had to fight for the right to be seen clearly without being simplified. Stories of people who don’t ask for permission to exist, who rewrite themselves in real time, who turn the act of being into a kind of music all its own.
Sing this work with boldness. Sing it with tenderness. And above all, sing it like your voice matters…because it does.
Always yours, Rosśa Crean
Performance Notes
These four songs can be performed in any order you wish. I of course know that some of you may be working through vocal transitions as part of HRT, so please know that if this cycle is sitting well in your tessitura but you are feeling vocally limited due to any current changes, you absolutely have permission to change a higher or lower extreme note to help yourself out.
In measures 3 to 6 of “Transgender, Now in HD,” I composed the phrase there with an aim to loosely mimic overtone singing. In this case, keep the tongue and teeth formed in an “r” sound while the lips transition from “oo” to “ee,” gradually moving from one vowel to the next along the dashed lines. If this confuses or evades you for any reason, feel free to email me at rossa@rossacrean.com and we can find some time for me to help you out.
Lastly, as a vocalist who began in a cultural tradition of unaccompanied singing, the most important thing I want to stress is that you do not need to feel as if you must sing to a metronome. Honor the rests and pauses and do not rush through. Silences are just as much a part of music as the sound, so let the spaces around the notes breathe.
