Aevum (2002-03) 45' for two sopranos, two tenors, baritone, bass, flute, viola, cello, and contrabass

This piece was premiered as part of the All Rivers at Once project on March 30, 2003, at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was performed again at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Lansing, Michigan, on April 5, 2003. It was a winner of the 2004 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards, and the 2004 Bearns Prize at Columbia University.

Aevum takes its title from a Latin word meaning both "eternity," and "the life (or age) of a man." The work is at once about the impermanence of life and the illusion of impermanence, taking a cycle of one year as a symbol for every year, or for the cycle of life itself. The musical language of the work borrows singing styles and vocal sounds from many traditions and languages, to try to get at some essence of how prayer and breath and the voice are inescapable parts of what it means to be human, in any culture. The work is structured in eleven movements: five major movements, corresponding to the seasons, and related to different ways of being together as people – in prayer, in dance, in love, and in work; two solo songs, related more to the individual human experience; and four interludes, where the veils part, and eternity becomes manifest. The subtitles of the main five movements are taken from lines of poetry by the 13th century Sufi mystic Jelal ud-din Rumi.