When Words Live (for Amplified Voice and Electronics)

Composer: Soheil Shirangi • Text: Emily Dickinson
Year of Creation: 2025
Performer: Yifan Shao
Performance: April 13, 2025 — Vocalverse Repertoire, San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Venue: Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, 50 Oak St, San Francisco, CA

A word is dead when it is said,
Some say – I say it just begins to live that day.
Emily Dickinson

When Words Live transforms Dickinson’s brief yet profound poem into a sonic meditation on voice, breath, and the afterlife of language. The amplified voice, intertwined with electronics, explores how words resonate beyond their moment of utterance—how sound can extend meaning into space and time. Through delicate processing and evolving textures, the piece reflects on the fragile boundary between silence and expression, where language itself begins to live anew.