The songs’ lyrics were the result of a deep collaboration between poet and composer: “I wanted to commission poetry for this project, and it needed to be a Floridian poet,” explained Lee. “I read one of Carolina’s poems and I could immediately hear the music in the words. Luckily, when I reached out to her, she readily agreed to collaborate on the project. Her poems balance ambiguity with clarity of message in a way that makes them perfect for setting to music. The repeated refrains of the poems had an undeniable impact on the structures of the songs, many of which are like elaborate verse/chorus pop songs.”

The new album builds on the success of Scott Lee’s previous Florida-inspired full-length album: Through the Mangrove Tunnels (Panoramic Recordings, 2020), performed by the JACK Quartet, Steve Beck, and Russell Lacy.

About Scott Lee

Praised as “colorful” and “engaging” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Scott Lee’s music often takes inspiration from popular genres, exploring odd-meter grooves and interlocking hockets while featuring pointillistic orchestration and extended performance techniques.

Lee served as the Bozeman Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence from 2021–2024, and has worked with leading orchestras including the Baltimore, North Carolina, and Portland Symphony Orchestras, and chamber groups such as the JACK Quartet, yMusic, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and pop artist Ben Folds. Recent commissioners include the Barlow Endowment, Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, Bozeman Symphony, and Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra.

Notable honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Lee is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Florida School of Music.

About Camila Meza

Equally prized as a vocalist, guitarist, and composer, Camila Meza has uplifted audiences worldwide with her assured and beautiful singing, virtuosic guitar playing, and vivid, melodic songwriting that reveals new layers with every listen. Hailed by The New York Times for her “appealing combination of lightness and depth,” she has appeared at major festivals, on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert and WBGO’s The Checkout, and earned acclaim from The Village Voice and The Wall Street Journal. Meza has collaborated with artists such as Ryan Keberle, Fabian Almazan, Gretchen Parlato, and Dave Douglas, and was named #1 Rising Star Female Vocalist by DownBeat in 2022. She has released five albums as a leader – most recently Portal (2025), her debut on Ground Up Music featuring all original compositions.

About Carolina Hospital

Carolina Hospital is a poet, prose writer, and editor whose works explore themes of exile, identity, and the natural world. Her poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks and The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir, as well as Myth America and How to Get into Trouble, written collaboratively with Maureen Seaton, Holly Iglesias, and Nicole Hospital-Medina. She is also the author of the novel A Little Love (as C. C. Medina) and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Naked Came the Manatee. Hospital has edited influential anthologies such as Los Atrevidos: Cuban American Writers and A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida. Her poetry has appeared widely, including in the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. Her newest collection, All Roads Lead to Here, appears in 2026 from Anhinga Press.