It has long been a curiosity that in England, with its rich—one might even say dominating—literary history, music should suffer in pronounced comparative inferiority. Since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695, England’s greatest musical voices seemed to come from abroad, beginning with Handel, lat...

1. “Lend me your ears”
(William Shakespeare; 1599)
2. “It rings in the ear”
(Martin Luther King; 1963)
3. “The Spirit is the Conscious Ear”
(Emily Dickinson; 1899)

Lift Up Thine Ears (2021) for orchestra was commissioned in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Omaha Symphony. The theme...