If You Use Your Senses

If You Use Your Senses is a song cycle for tenor, bassoon, and piano that is inspired by a sensory imagining of Matthew Shepard’s final moments. The piece is structured as a set of meditations on where and how Matthew Shepard was left to die and how it might feel to experience death the way he did — as a gradual removal of the senses, a falling away of the consciousness. Honing in on each of the senses as they fail brings into focus sensations, memories, dreams, yearnings, and pain. Written as a cathartic panacea to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death, this piece offers a space for reflection on the nature of life and death, the power of love and hatred, and the sometimes tenuous bonds between us and our world.