#4214: Art Pop Song Cycles
Is it art song or is it a pop song? We’ll wrestle with that question for this edition of the show as we hear music from three song cycles, most with text from already extant poetry. Hear work by Gemma Peacocke which sets Afghan women’s folk poems, landays, to electro-acoustic music. Also, hear music from song cycles by Donna McKevitt, and Sarah Kirkland Snider.
New Zealand-born Princeton-based composer Gemma Peacocke – wrote songs inspired by and using Afghan women’s folk poems called landays from the collection translated by Eliza Griswold, I Am the Beggar of the World. Peacocke set these texts – ranging from a collective rage, a lament, a filthy joke, a love of homeland, an aching longing, a call to arms. The song cycle, scored for voice and piano, percussion, bass, and electronics, features the use of fixed electronics and projections which hint at “the distance, anonymity and strange intimacy of phone calls, text messages, and radio broadcasts in which the poems are shared.” (Gemma Peacocke’s Bandcamp)
Here are a few:
When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.
Your eyes aren’t eyes. They’re bees.
I can find no cure for their sting.
May your airplane crash and may the pilot die
that you are pouring bombs on my beloved Afghanistan.
Also, listen to music from English composer and singer, Donna McKeviitt, who is also a former member of a goth-chamber vocal ensemble Miranda Sex Garden. Listen to selections from her song cycle, "Translucence," intimate settings of poetry by the late Derek Jarman, the provocative filmmaker, artist, and gardener. The music is for three female voices, a male countertenor, viola, and cello.
There’s also music from Sarah Kirkland Snider’s song cycle “Unremembered,” featuring vocal performances by DM Stith and Shara Worden, along with the Unremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sounds, ICE, The Knights, & So Percussion.) The work sets poetry by New-York-based poet/writer Nathaniel Bellows, and evokes ghostly and beautiful happenings in and around a farm in rural Massachusetts.
Program #4211: New Releases, February 2019 (First aired 2/28/2019)
ARTIST: Eliza Bagg
WORK: Gemma Peacocke: London [6:05]
RECORDING: Waves & Lines
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: gemmapeacocke.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Donna McKevitt
WORK: i sit here immobile [1:44]
RECORDING: Translucence
SOURCE: Teldec #22500
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or iTunes
ARTIST: Donna McKevitt
WORK: prelude to sebastiane [1:59]
RECORDING: Translucence
SOURCE: Teldec #22500
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or iTunes
ARTIST: Donna McKevitt
WORK: sebastiane [6:14]
RECORDING: Translucence
SOURCE: Teldec #22500
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or iTunes
ARTIST: Donna McKevitt
WORK: adam and eve and punch-me-not [2:36]
RECORDING: Translucence
SOURCE: Teldec #22500
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or iTunes
ARTIST: Donna McKevitt
WORK: prelude [2:38]
RECORDING: Translucence
SOURCE: Teldec #22500
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or iTunes
ARTIST: Donna McKevitt
WORK: i walk in this garden [4:33]
RECORDING: Translucence
SOURCE: Teldec #22500
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or iTunes
ARTIST: Eliza Bagg
WORK: Gemma Peacocke: Bees [4:33]
RECORDING: Waves & Lines
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: gemmapeacocke.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Eliza Bagg
WORK: Gemma Peacocke: Love [5:31]
RECORDING: Waves & Lines
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: gemmapeacocke.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Eliza Bagg
WORK: Gemma Peacocke: Separation [7:28]
RECORDING: Waves & Lines
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records
INFO: gemmapeacocke.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: DM Stith, The Unremembered Orchestra
WORK: Sarah Kirkland Snider: The Estate [3:36]
RECORDING: Unremembered
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records NWAM 067
INFO: newamsterdamrecords.com
ARTIST: Shara Nova, The Unremembered Orchestra
WORK: Sarah Kirkland Snider: The Guest [4:45]
RECORDING: Unremembered
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records NWAM 067
INFO: newamsterdamrecords.com
ARTIST: Shara Nova, The Unremembered Orchestra
WORK: Sarah Kirkland Snider: The Swan [3:59]
RECORDING: Unremembered
SOURCE: New Amsterdam Records NWAM 067
INFO: newamsterdamrecords.com
