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51���� Assistant Professor of Mathematics Timmy Brown long dreamed of setting the works of Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer to music.

That dream came true in May 2024, when Brown acquired non-exclusive North American rights to use 10 of Tranströmer’s poems for his song cycle, The Half-Finished Heaven, for just $100. But those rights came with the requirement that he had to write the entire work within one year.

While Brown has pursued music composition as a hobby for much of his life, he had never taken on such a large project. He felt ready, but writing against the clock presented a challenge for his creativity.

“It seemed too good to be true,” Brown said. “This was the most ambitious music project I’d ever conceived, and it came with a deadline. As soon as the rights were in hand, I got to writing.”

Brown’s completed work will receive its world premiere at a special collaborative concert with 51����’s Music Department at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 2, at McCready Hall in the Taylor-Meade Performing Arts Center on Pacific’s Forest Grove Campus.

The Half-Finished Heaven features Cessaries Galusha, piano area coordinator for Pacific’s Music Department, Portland-based guest baritone soloist Adrian Rosales, and the university’s Chamber Singers.

The concert is both an example of a collaborative partnership between Pacific’s academic departments and a dream realized for Brown, who has composed music privately for over 20 years.

Brown did not have his work performed publicly until April 2022, when Pacific’s student-led Vera Voce ensemble performed his setting of Emily Dickinson’s “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close.” Vera Voce performed another one of his pieces, a setting of Lord Byron’s “So, We’ll Go No More a Roving,” that fall, and will also perform one of his shorter pieces as part of the May 2 concert.

The concert also features a partnership with Pacific’s School of Occupational Therapy to raise awareness about stroke, in recognition of Tranströmer's own experience. Assistant Professor Grayson Owens and occupational therapy students will present a 10-minute video illustrating occupational therapy services available to individuals who have had a stroke and will present demonstrations of adaptive devices for stroke victims before and after the concert.

Those collaborations are something that Brown believes are unique to a small college like Pacific, bringing students and faculty closer together.

“It’s incredibly special and humbling to be given the opportunity to bring together people from across the university,” Brown said. “We can’t take these interdisciplinary opportunities for granted. There are so many connections to be made if we just take the time to look closely and be present in our own life and the lives of those around us.”

Considered one of Scandinavia’s most influential modern writers, Tranströmer wrote poetry and played piano alongside his career as a psychologist, publishing 15 volumes of works between 1954 and his death in 2015.  Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011, Tranströmer continued writing and playing despite a debilitating stroke in 1990 that limited him physically.

Brown felt like he had found a kindred spirit when he first read Tranströmer’s poetry during a class at Eastern Oregon University, where he earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics, computer science/multimedia studies and English.

“His poems are quiet, introspective, the kind of thing an introvert like me would be drawn to,” Brown said. “Despite having won the Nobel Prize, I learned that Tranströmer wasn’t actually a trained poet. He was a psychologist and wrote poetry in his spare time for most of his career. I value that Tranströmer writes about places, people, and subjects that seem to be important to him.”

The Half-Finished Heaven comprises 10 poems, carefully chosen by Brown to present different moments in Tranströmer’s life. Most of the poems are presented in the order that they were written, with the exception of Brown’s favorite poems, “Romanesque Arches,” which concludes the first half of the cycle, and “The Half-Finished Heaven,” the cycle’s finale. Both songs feature Pacific’s Chamber Singers.

The chronological order is an important nod to the challenges Tranströmer faced after his stroke, when he was confined to a wheelchair and largely unable to speak. While the pianist uses two hands for the first half of the work, the settings of Tranströmer’s post-stroke poems use left-hand accompaniment only.

“Contemporary composers wrote left-hand pieces for Tranströmer to play in the years following his stroke,” Brown said, “so I like to imagine that Tranströmer himself could have played the piano part I wrote for his post-stroke poems.”

In presenting The Half-Finished Heaven, Brown hopes that concertgoers will feel a sense of hope in today’s uncertain times.

“It’s my personal hope that everyone who attends will walk away with a renewed sense of purpose,” he said. “The true ‘half-finished heaven’ is Earth, our home, and I like to think that we can all do our part to make that home a better place.”

General admission tickets for The Half-Finished Heaven are $10 for adults and $8 for seniors, military and non-51���� students. 51���� students, faculty and staff are free. in advance of the concert.