Repertoire
Hermit Songs
Samuel Barber
Scribbled in the margins of religious tomes, these words carry the intimacy of a diary in the sense that they were not intended for public consumption. The life of a monk is one of self-alienation with the assumed loss of humanity in search of a higher power, but through these margin-written notes comes the understanding that the search for God does not mean the absence of humanity, in fact, it is a deeply human and humbling experience.
Love, Loss, and Exile
Juhi Bansal
Landays, or Landai, are folk couplets created and passed down by Pashtan women, Landay is Pashto for “short, poisonous snake.” They usually explore themes of love, grief, war, independence, separation, marriage, sex, and more. They can be humorous or sarcastic in nature as well. Love, Loss, and Exile features five Landai from Afghanistan, where women and girls are currently having their freedoms stripped away: many women are no longer permitted to continue their education past the sixth grade, go to their jobs, or speak in public. Recently Afghan women have used music, and singing in particular, to protest these rulings from the Taliban.
Four Dickinson Songs
Lori Laitman
Emily Dickinson remains a powerful voice in the world of poetry, whose voice is unique, cryptic, almost fragmented at times, and ultimately deeply human and introspective. Posthumously, many of Dickinson’s works were published without her consent, and in many of the publications of her work, text has either been altered or censored, thus removing the unique idiosyncrasies of her poetry. In the Laitman setting of her poems, Dickinson’s voice is reinvigorated with the bliss of Laitman’s compositional work. In her use of harmony and storytelling, the resulting effect is one of hope, optimism, joy, and utter humanization.
Letters from Edna
Juliana Hall
Letters are often an intimate writing exercise. An exercise involving naming things that otherwise would remain unsaid. In the letters of Edna St Vincent Millay, this theme is quite evident. Despite the pervasive cultural stigma of her time that discouraged women from expressing their emotions outwardly, her letters reveal her subtle ways of seeking out intimacy and understanding with her loved ones despite the many early 20th century language barriers that affected how she could communicate with them in socially acceptable ways.
From the Diary of Virginia Woolf
Dominick Argento
Despite the societal pressure of her time and her subsequent self-alienation, Woolf longs to invoke a sense of intimacy and thoughtfulness in her diary entries. In contrast to the Letters from Edna, which were intended to be received, in Woolf’s diary she builds a world where she plays both the writer and the observer, crafting entries which explore deep personal and emotional introspection and yet offer direct reflection on the audience who she imagines viewing her diaries posthumously. Is she curating a written record, a time capsule for a distant listener, or is she simply just pondering the world to herself?
Three Songs After Emily Dickinson
William Sydeman
A visit to purgatory, the taste of a liquor never brewed, and a strange encounter with “Hope.” These are the images captured by Emily Dickinson and expanded by William Sydeman's avant-garde cycle for voice and cello. The extended techniques used by the cello are complimented with Dickinson's unique and direct poetry from her most creative writing period,.
Great Camelot
Juliana Hall
Words that make sense of themself through silence, existence, and feeling. “Great Camelot” is a reflection on our self-journeys towards rekindling the original kindness and innocence within us. A universal truth shared amongst kings, princes, sailors, and stewards of art. “Great Camelot” is a new song cycle by Juliana Hall with poetry by Sameer Dahar, a current Philosophy-Cognitive Studies degree candidate, poet, and advocate for individuals with autism. Great Camelot was originally commissioned by the Lynx Project.
Four Poems of Langston Hughes
Edith Hemenway
Langston Hughes’ poetry is highly intentional and cryptic. His voice invokes a sense of brevity, privacy, a quick, fleeting eye into a moment with a character who wishes to remain unknown. And yet the words that are left behind speak to passion, deep aching, and longing for freedom. Hughes sets these obscure cloudy scenes in Island and Midwinter Blues, hidden vignettes which only reveal themselves to those who were meant to see them.
114 Songs
Charles Ives
While working as an insurance executive, Charles Ives composed music in his free time, and self-published a collection of 114 Songs in 1922. Ives explores feelings of nostalgia and sense memory by infusing traditional American songs and hymns into his compositions, and his eclectic tonal and rhythmic writing anticipates the compositional developments in American music that would come after his lifetime in the latter half of the Twentieth Century.