Vocalise, for soprano and orchestra, was written in the summer of 2005. The orchestration was completed a few months later during my stay at Yale University as a Fulbright Fellow. The key theme, modal in nature, is announced in the introductory measures by the woodwinds and then it is given to the voice, which develops it through a series of gradually accumulating phrases. The absence of text enhances the perception of the voice as an orchestral instrument, focusing on a restrained rhetoric, based solely on the musical qualities of the melody. The middle part is characterized by a lighter mood with subtle punctuation and more transparent tone-colors. The accompaniment, faithfully following the phrases of the vocal cantilena, acquires through the austerity of its presence an archaic and majestic character. In the finale, the gradual accumulation of tension leads to a unanimous tutti of the orchestra, where a sense of robust impetus is temporarily created. But this possibility is quickly abandoned and the musical discourse, retreating into itself, returns to the original melody, with the soprano, almost as a spirit, as a distant memory, fading into a veil of mystery.