new piece: To Sing You to Sleep

No, not a new piece to sing you to sleep. It's a new piece entitled "To Sing You to Sleep." I realized recently that I never talked about my last premiere with The Singers. Their January concert series was entitled "Mars & Venus" and featured the ensemble creatively splitting into a men's chorus and a women's chorus. Matt programmed some amazing things (György Orban's Mass No. 6 and Francis Poulenc's Quatre petites prieres de Saint Francois d'Assise chief among them) and gave the world premiere of my work for men's chorus.

It's an older piece from 2003 that never received its premiere and, holy hell, am I glad I asked Matt to consider it for this series. The men of The Singers performed the bejeezus out of it and, in at least one case, got a standing ovation afterwards.

The work is incredibly difficult. The normal TTBB scoring opens up to some pretty large clusters (6-part TB writing with 2-part countertenors above them) that the ensemble pulled off with the beauty and ease I've come to know over the past 5 years as one of their composers-in-residence. (I just love this "job".)

Here, take a listen. It might take a bit to load but I think it's totally worth it. You can read the poetry at the main website under the TB cache of pieces.

This post has been photo-less so far but Henri Rousseau's La Bohémienne endormie (one of my favorite paintings) seems to fit in here while we're talking about "singing someone to sleep". I got to see it in the flesh a few years ago and fell in love.















On a more gastronomical note, I just had the most amazing soufflé of my entire life. It had artichoke, spinach and red peppers in it and was oddly filling. I've got to learn how to make one of these!