Song of Triumph
| December 9, 2020Through her husband’s battle for his life, composer Sarah Dukes sings of faith and courage
Sarah Dukes was just eight years old when she composed her first melody, “Elephant in Tights.” Today she’s an award-winning composer whose record of piano melodies was on the ballot for the 59th Grammy Awards. And it all started when she didn’t want to practice piano.
“My parents told me that I still needed to sit at the piano every day, even if I didn’t want to play. I was bored and started fooling around with the keys. That’s when I realized I could create my own melodies instead of the ones the piano teacher gave me.
But it’s not like I hear complete melodies in my head,” she explains about her composing process. “I feel a strong pull of emotion and know something needs to come out, so I go and sit at the piano and play around until I find it. I start putting things together until I realize, ‘Oh, there it is.’ ”
Because every song she composes comes straight from her heart, Sarah considers the piano to be her diary. It took her years to release her first album, Finding Forever, a collection of songs she wrote in high school, because they felt so personal. Publicizing them made Sarah feel vulnerable.
She eventually did release them, having top-talent pianists play the melodies on the recording. Why use others? “I consider myself more of a composer than a pianist,” she says. “I compose songs that are more complex than what I myself can play.”
Her most recent release, “Triumph,” was in October, but Sarah actually composed it years before. Three years ago, her daughter had respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a dangerous virus that affects toddlers. At just one-and-a-half years old, the Dukes’ daughter was intubated.
“During her long recovery, I started writing this piece, reflecting on how she pulled through the scary time. It made me think of what we went through as a family and how we were all triumphant. Then I thought about how everyone is going through something and we’re all triumphant in our own ways by doing the best we can. The melody turned into a piece acknowledging the power within all of us.”
Because the song felt so powerful, Sarah wanted a full orchestra and not piano alone to play it. Mendy Hershkowitz, a family friend and music producer, took the two-and-half year project on.
“Patience is part of the process with my music. I’d come to him with comments like, ‘Add a half-second pause between those two notes.’ I can feel the spaces between notes and those are part of the composition as well.”
“Triumph” is a song of courage, perseverance, and victory. Back then, Sarah had no idea how true the message would ring — or how much her family would be tested again.
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