Drink The Wild Ayre (for string orchestra) is a re-imagining for harp and strings of the string quartet by the same name that I wrote for the Emerson String Quartet in 2023. The title is a playful nod to one of the most famous quotes by their transcendentalist namesake essayist/philosopher/poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity.” An ayre is a song-like, lyrical piece. The title seemed an apt reference not only to the lilting, asymmetrical rhythms of the music’s melodic narrative, but also to the questing spirit, sense of adventure, and full-hearted passion with which the Emerson has thrown itself into everything it has done for the past 47 years.
San Francisco Classical Voice
"[Drink the Wild Ayre] evokes [a] sense of ephemeral wonder. Melodies glow like summer sun through closed eyelids. Through impeccable counterpoint and delicate orchestration, Snider shapes our listening with remarkable precision, focusing our attention exactly where she intends."
Spectrum Culture
“Drink the Wild Ayre” is distinctive... a lightness fraught with gothic airs and rich string textures that come together to create delicious tension."
Musical America
"Harpist Noël Wan is the soloist in Drink the Wild Ayre, a reimagining of a piece Snider wrote for the Emerson String Quartet. Pinpoint sonics highlight the rich dialogue between harp and orchestral strings."
Blogcritics
"Drink the Wild Ayre” (2024), originally a string quartet, appears here in an arrangement for harp and strings. A strain of Steve Reich's minimalism, with harp and strings trading ostinati, jostles with a harmonic language drawn from both 20th-century American music and the Romantic era. The harp produces some rather startling, almost percussive effects while the strings chip out fragments of melody and build cross-currents of scales...intriguing and accessible, complex and emotionally gripping."
Gramophone
"A searching, questing spirit belongs to Drink the Wild Ayre, heard here in a version for harp and string orchestra, where interlocking variations yield a rich sonic palimpsest of layers stacked in ever-increasing intensities.
