Following the death of a loved one, the American poet Barbara Crooker wrote, “How can we go on/knowing the end of the story?”

The American composer Dale Trumbore attempted to answer that question with her haunting choral work entitled “How to Go on,” given its premiere performance on today’s date in 2016 in Anaheim, California by the Choral Arts Initiative.

Rather than setting the traditional Latin text of the Requiem Mass like Verdi, or passages from the Bible like Brahms, Trumbore crafted a kind of “secular requiem,” choosing texts by Crooker and two other contemporary American poets addressing fundamental questions of life, love, and loss.

“I have moments of utter panic about my own mortality,” confessed Trumbore, “and I know many other people do as well, although we may not openly discuss or address our fears about death. Taken together, the seven poems of ‘How to Go On’ recognize these fears while also cultivating a feeling of everything ultimately being at peace. Hopefully the music adds to that visceral feeling of reassurance. “

New Jersey native Dale Trumbore studied with the great choral composer Morten Lauridsen at the University of Southern California and her own vocal works are noted for what The New York Times described as her “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.”