News

Towards the Flame recording by The Cadillac Moon Ensemble

October 21, 2011

I recently got back from a wonderful recording session at New Dynamic Records in Indiana, where the Cadillac Moon Ensemble recently finished recording my 2009 work, Towards the Flame. This wonderful group of musicians did an incredible job, paying attention to every detail with the utmost care and artistry, and the result will be truly stunning. Also, the recording engineer and producer at New Dynamic were wonderful to work with and are dedicated to bringing recent pieces to a wider audience through their label. Look here for the announcement of the release date, which should be sometime early in 2012. There will also be a CD release concert by Cadillac Moon happening in NYC, so keep on the lookout for that as well!

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Current Projects

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

I am currently very much in the throes of composing a large but short chamber opera, adapting Rudyard Kipling’s classic children’s story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” about a young mongoose and his struggles against two resident cobras in a garden. The libretto is by the incomparable David Pisa, and is very much a 21st-century adaptation, calling the basic worldview of Kipling’s story into question, while maintaining its attractive narrative rhythm and spirit. This work is going to take up all of my time for the next 5 months or so, and will be premiered on May 18th, 2012 in Chicago’s Ganz Hall. Details will be posted as the date approaches.

The performers on board for this project are all world-class, and writing for them is an absolute composer’s dream! The singers are soprano Tony Arnold, mezzo-soprano Laura Mercado-Wright, tenor Peter Tantsits, and bass-baritone Alan Dunbar. I am very much writing these roles for these individuals, and trying to use their strengths as performers to the advantage of the opera’s drama. The orchestra is going to be made up of two grammy-winning ensembles, eighth blackbird and the Pacifica Quartet, and will also feature the talents of Anubis Quartet, one of the most exciting groups of chamber musicians I have heard in a long time. Each of these three ensembles can do anything a composer could ask, and many things I’ll never think of. The conductor for this escapade is none other than the CSO MusicNow’s maestro, Cliff Colnot. I still have to pinch myself sometimes when I sit down to write…

I will update more about each section of the opera as it goes along, but right now, I will summarize the basic concept: think an Oliver Knussen Where the Wild Things Are heavily influenced by Looney Tunes soundtracks, with a healthy dose of Peter and the Wolf- and L’Histoire du Soldat- style narration done by the singers. The premiere will not be staged, due to constraints of time and space, but the idea is that the piece could exist with any kind of staging, ranging from puppets, to dance, to standard staging.

So, I hope you can make it to the premiere in May! Stay tuned for more details as the process continues!

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