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Additional Info
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ComposerNathaniel Stookey
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PublisherAssociated Music Publishers Inc
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ArrangementVoice/Piano (VCE/PF)
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FormatVocal Score
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Genre20th Century
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TextMaya Angelou
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LanguageEnglish
Description
For soprano and piano (2019)
Also available for mezzo and piano
Text: Maya Angelou (English)
Duration: 3 minutes
Composer Note
I wrote Love Liberates as a wedding present for Christian Reif and Julia Bullock who, like many musical couples, must coordinate busy performance schedules that often require them to be apart for long periods. The words for the song are from an interview with Maya Angelou. In it, Angelou describes her relationship with her mother, who, in giving her the freedom to go when she needed to, “liberated me to life.”
“She released me. She freed me. […] That’s love.”
Love Liberates was first performed privately by Rachael Wilson and Bretton Brown at Reif and Bullock’s wedding on the Chiemsee, outside Rosenheim, Bavaria, on August 3rd, 2019. Its first public performance, by Julia Bullock and Christian Reif, was recorded for broadcast in Washington D.C., as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, on February 14, 2025. The broadcast, hosted by Tom Huizenga, was released on March 26 of that year.
— Nathaniel Stookey