As Jonathan Santore got ready to write a special musical piece for this weekend's annual fall performances of the New Hampshire Master Chorale, he might have been expected to look for inspiration in grand themes: an idyll of autumn leaves, a celebration of the changing seasons in the state.

Instead, Santore found inspiration in an insidious red squirrel. Or, to be exact, what may be a whole extended family of red squirrels.

The Master Chorale offers its annual fall concert series this weekend, with performances tomorrow night at South Congregational Church in Concord, followed by performances in Norwich, Vermont, and Plymouth on Saturday and Sunday. The theme for the series is "Harvest and Home" - which is how Santore came to consider those pesky red squirrels.

Santore is composer-in-residence for the Chorale -

a professional, auditioned, nonprofit choir founded in 2003 - as well as a recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State Council on the Arts. And as he set out to compose music for that "Harvest and Home" theme, he found his muse in the words of poet and fellow Plymouth State University Professor Liz Ahi.

"Liz had a reading last year at the Plymouth library, and I just loved her poems," explained Santore. "She went on to win an award and had her poems published in a chapbook. And when I was told that our theme was 'harvest and home,' I immediately had her words in mind."

The "Harvest and Home" series will feature the debut of three new compositions by Santore. All three set Ahi's sometimes light, sometimes frustrated, always engaging words to music.

In her work "Living With Squirrels," Ahi documents - with a perfect poetic rhythm - the story of a rural home invasion: squirrels. She visits the hardware store, she buys the Havahart trap, and as the poem goes on, Ahi begins to realize that she may lose her mind long before she loses her squirrelly houseguests:

Begin wondering / if you are repeatedly trapping the same / two squirrels. Consider spray-panting them. / Consider drowning them in the river. / A season will pass like this. Drink lots / of bourbon, which is the color of a red squirrel.

"I really like Liz's work - it's somebody with this urban background, moving here and dealing with and living in nature," said Santore, who was born in Tennessee and has lived in New Hampshire since the mid-1990s. "It appealed to me, this theme of if you're going to live up here you have to deal with nature in this personal way, and how do you do that? It's easy to relate to. It's fun."

Santore started his own musical life as a trumpeter; he began to discover music composition in college, delving into the works of 20th-century composers and then, gradually, growing to love the work of the old masters.

"I first found Alban Berg from Vienna and Leonard Bernstein - and that was serious music that really spoke to my soul," said Santore. "From there, I went back, and met Mozart, Beethoven."

When asked what artistic piece truly first engaged and enriched him, Santore offers an answer both surprising and fervent.

"The first work of art that really overwhelmed me and moved me - grabbed me - was Citizen Kane, said Santore. "I walked away from the movie saying to myself, 'I want to be able to communicate that way, as Orson Welles did.' That became motivation for me and what I would do."

Santore has, indeed, learned to communicate in all manner of media that Welles himself may have approved of. He has won a slew of awards, including the 1999 American Composers Forum Welcome Christmas! Carol Contest; he was named N.H. Composer of the Year in 2006 and 1999. Around the globe, Santore has won awards at the University of South Carolina Choral Composition Contest, Honorable Mention in the 2000 Britten-On-The-Bay Composition Competition, and even a special mention from the British Trombone Society.

As he moved into more full-time life as a composer - he is currently Professor of Music Theory and Composition and Chair of the Department of Music, Theatre and Dance at PSU - Santore found that he was reaching a certain state of musician's nirvana - that special universe where composers can compose and fully hear their new works entirely in their heads.

Most of the time, according to Santore, he does not sit at a piano (or even a trumpet) to compose new work: he has a slightly different practice.

"I'm the guy you see walking up and down Main Street, bumping into things because I'm listening and even editing music in my head," Santore said. "I'll be listening to a piece in my head and then there will be this internal discussion - 'is this what I meant?' - so the work develops that way. And I also, of course, end up bumping into stuff."

Santore said that he gets his own sense of confidence and composure thanks, in large part, to his familiarity and trust in the members of the Master Chorale.

"I am very blessed to have been able to work for some time with this great, talented group of people - as I am composing, I know them well enough that yes, I can hear the Chorale performing a piece in my head before they ever hear it," said Santore. "And with the level of talent, professionalism, and devotion - I never find myself composing a song and having to worry 'Is this too complex? Can they do this? I know they can."

In his younger days, Santore admits that he was a bit of a closet poet, which led him to sensitivity to the finely honed words of others.

"I've always been sensitive to text, and I was doing some poetry - it came out all metered and rhymed, and I realized I was much more into the rhythm of the words than the flow," Santore said.

He said that he is not tempted to utilize any of his own secret poems as the basis for his musical compositions.

"I haven't used my own words since I was a young fella!" Santore said. "Now I am fully blessed to have and to recognize other great words all around me."

(The NH Master Chorale's Harvest and Home series takes place at three locations this weekend, beginning tomorrow evening at South Congregational Church in Concord. Tickets are $15 for students/seniors, $20 for everybody else. For more information on the schedule or the Chorale, go to nhmasterchorale.org.)