“In this room” written by sheila wright & EYV

Sheila Wright (b. 1961) is from small town Alberta where she received her first music training from her mother and continued studying as a pianist at the Universities of Alberta and Victoria and at the Banff Centre for the Arts.  She has worked as a pianist and composer in concert halls, churches, ballet studios, theatres and a hotel in the Yukon. Sheila resides in Edmonton, Alberta where she teaches piano and composition out of her own studio and plays and composes for a number of children’s choirs. For her, the art of music education is a continual source of fascination.

“In This Room” is an SAB choral piece composed in 2021 as a collaboration between Sheila and Edmonton Young Voices choristers. Choristers wrote the text, which Sheila later set to music.

In This Room

This is the place I always felt safe to send all my  worries away.
Shoulder to shoulder connected by song I felt calm, I felt strong.
Year after year I changed and I grew, but here I returned to myself.
Someplace so deep only music could reach, I felt free. I could breathe.

I have missed hearing all your voices. It’s lonely to sing to a screen.
It is lonely to hear only myself in my room…on Zoom.
This is the place I always felt safe, it’s here I return to myself.
Someplace so deep only music can reach, in this room, in the same room.

I have missed hearing all your voices. It’s lonely to sing to a screen.
It is lonely to hear only myself in my room…on Zoom.
I have missed hearing all your voices. With you my voice is set free.
Shoulder to shoulder, our faces unmasked, in this room in the same room.