Program Note:   

Four Songs for Mezzo-soprano are gathered together and dedicated to the extraordinary singer and actress Leandra Ramm. As a set they address four different types of agape: love of the aesthetic, compassion, nostalgia, and romance.

Musik: Atem der Statuen, a German language setting of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, was commissioned by Soprano Heidi Moss and composer Kurt Erickson and is dedicated to them. Completed on January 27th, 2015, Ms. Moss premiered it on September 5th, 2015 on Lieder Alive’s Fifth Annual Liederabend Series in San Francisco.

To a Street Person was commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society and is dedicated to artistic director Michael Brofman. I translated the original Baudelaire from the French and adapted slightly. Completed on February 15th, 2020, its premiere, as so many did during the COVID pandemic, took place on the Internet. 

There exist literally hundreds of published arrangements of La Flor de la Canela (the tune and Spanish lyric originally written by Chabuca Granda and now in the public domain), the unofficial anthem of Lima, Peru. I transformed the original waltz into a huapango for mine for a recital that Gilda Lyons and I gave for her Phoenix Concert Series in New York City, completing it on March 18th, 2014, and premiering it ten days later.

Curating an evening of settings of Paul Verlaine at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Brian Zeger, artistic director of Juilliard’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, asked me if I had set any of Paul Verlaine’s verse. I replied, no, but that I had always wanted to. That night, September 23rd, 2014, I translated a few lines and set them. The Nightingale is dedicated to composer Ben Moore and to Brian, who accompanied the song’s premiere at Alice Tully Hall in New York City a few weeks later, on October 14th.