Two settings from the 1999 song-cycle Baseball Songs, by Daniel Sonenberg. The text for both of these songs are on-air broadcasts by legendary Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto, from the compilation O Holy Cow, the Selected Verses of Phil Rizzuto, edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely. 
This is a live recording of the world premiere, with Lydia Brown, piano, and Roberto Giardiniere, baritone. 

Daniel Sonenberg: Prayer For The Captain/ Imagine (1999)

The Summer King is an opera in two acts the life of the great Negro League baseball player Josh Gibson. 
Music by Daniel Sonenberg
Libretto by Daniel Sonenberg and Daniel Nester

Excerpt of a performance of three scenes from The Summer King, presented by American Opera Projects at Opera America's New Works Forum, January 15, 2014, at the Mary Cary Flagger Hall in the Dimenna Center, NYC. 

Josh Gibson: Stephen Salters (baritone)
Sam Bankhead: Kenneth Kellogg (bass)

Conductor: Steven Osgood
Associate Conductor: Charity Wicks
Orchestra:
Flute/picc.: Margaret Lancaster
Bb Clarinet/Eb Clarinet/Bass Clarinet: Liz Player
Soprano Saxophone/Tenor Saxophone: Steven Lyon
Basson: Damian Primis
Horn: Jason Sugata
C Trumpet 1: Thomas Hoyt
C Trumpet 2: John Dent
Bass Trombone: Jack Schatz
Percussion 1: Andy Blanco
Percussion 2: Jeffrey Irving
Piano/Celesta: Charity Wicks
Violin 1: Ashley Horne
Violin 2 Jessie Montgomery
Viola: Tia Allen
Cello: Lawrence Zoernig
Double bass: Anthony Morris



Synopsis of excerpt: After a visitation from his young wife, Helen, who died in childbirth years ago, Josh realizes where he is, and speaks to Sam, his best friend, about his fabled Yankee Stadium Home Run (“…it went out a long way….I hope you’ll remember that”), and then dies. Sam sings an aria about the fallen Summer King, who led all Negro Leaguers to the Promised Land, but was denied entry himself. He then contemplates his own plight, and that of his contemporaries, players who were either too old, or not great enough to enjoy the fruits of integration. During the final lines of Sam’s aria, lights up on the Elder Barber, who, we now see, is an example of just the kind of player Sam is singing about. The Elder Barber again extolls Josh Gibson’s greatness, as Sam asks “did we need to be greater men than our king to avoid our king’s fate?” With this, Sam fades out... (Act II Scene 5 continues with the Elder Barber and Younger Barber, who were the featured characters in the opera's opening scene). 

Special thanks: American Opera Projects; Opera America; Portland Ovations; University of Southern Maine

The Summer King (Sonenberg) - excerpt of Act II Scene 4

A dress rehearsal of Takes One to Know One, by Daniel Sonenberg. 

Bass Clarinet - Maria Wagner
Cello - Ben Noyes
Bass - Joshua DeScherer
Percussion (kick drum/floor tom) - Dan Sonenberg


Takes One to Know One

A demo recording of the first scene of act II of Daniel Sonenberg's opera The Summer King, based on the life of Negro League baseball great, Josh Gibson (libretto by Daniel Sonenberg and Daniel Nester)
More information about the opera is available here: http://www.danielsonenberg.org/summerking/

On this recording:
Singers:
Wendell Smith: Jesse Wakeman (tenor)
Gus Greenlee: Jeff Caron (tenor)
Señor Alacalde: Christian Figueroa (tenor)
Grace: Laurelle Mathison (mezzo)
Josh Gibson: Ron Williams (baritone)
Sam Bankhead: Josh Miller (baritone)
Mariachi vocal trio: Mauricio Trejo O'Reilly (tenor), Alex Guerrero (tenor), Rod Gomez (baritone)

Ensemble:
Violins: Jenny Elowitch, Rob Lehmann, Dino Liva
Trumpets: Alan Kaschub, Michelle Kingston
Bass: Joshua DeScherer
Guitar: Don Pride
Castanets: Josh Champagne
Piano: Bridget Convey
Piccolo: Nicole Rawding

Chorus: 
The University of Southern Maine Chamber Singers, Robert Russell, conductor

Conductor: Daniel Sonenberg (Robert Russell for the choral sections)

Recorded by Steve Drown at the University of Southern Maine

Overdubs recorded by: Alejandro Venguer, Second Story Sound, NYC

Edited by Daniel Sonenberg
Mixed and Mastered by Steve Drown and Daniel Sonenberg

SYNOPSIS OF SCENE 
Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1941.

PRELUDE: Wendell Smith asks Gus Greenlee, who has now been out of baseball for three years, why, after all he did for his players, they still abandoned him to play in the Mexican baseball league. Gus replies that the only thing his money couldn’t buy them, what they got down south, was dignity.

SCENE: A tremendous celebration, featuring Mexican music and proclamations by the mayor of Vera Cruz, Señor Alcalde. Josh is initially nowhere to be found, but ultimately stumbles on stage with a somewhat ornery disposition. He receives his prize money for being named Player of the Year, and complains about being paid in “Mex dollars,” before acknowledging that life south of the border is pretty good. He wonders why they should ever go home, while Grace tells him to enjoy the “high living” tonight, but be prepared to go back to the states and conquer the “whole white world” tomorrow. While others celebrate, Grace and Josh steal away to smoke a joint, and Josh, who grows increasingly agitated, collapses at the end of the scene (initially pulling Grace down with him).



Summer King Act II Scene 1

song by Daniel Sonenberg with words by Elliott Schwartz. Performed by Eleanor Taylor, soprano and Michael Rose, piano. 

My Comments Won't Be of Any Help

Song by Daniel Sonenberg, with text by M. Kupietz. Performed by Eleanor Taylor, soprano and Michael Rose, piano. 

Radiohead Song

Song by Daniel Sonenberg, with words by Andrew Goldstein. Performed by Eleanor Taylor, soprano and Michael Rose, piano. 

First Thing that pops into my head

Premiere of 41 Fathead, by Daniel Sonenberg. 
Performed by Bridget Convey, piano, and Lynn Vartan, percussion. 


41Fathead is the first piece I completed after my 41st birthday, and 41 was the age of my father when he died (and thus, long an age I had been anticipating with some trepidation). The two numbers, 4 and 1, when translated into pitch class integer notation (a common system used in post-tonal musical analysis, where C = 0, C# = 1 etc.), 4-1 becomes E-C#, or a descending minor third. When I was an undergraduate in college studying ear training for the first time, my classmate Christopher Hume, a brilliant and eccentric young composer and thinker, taught us all to hear the descending minor third as the childhood taunt “fat-head.” To this day, that melodic interval brings that association strongly to mind, more strongly, in fact, since Chris took his own life several years ago. Chris was one of the most important musical influences in my life – he hipped me to the path of the composer at a time when I didn’t know such creatures still existed. So this piece is a memorial to two who are departed, though still very much present. It takes as its starting point that descending interval, E-C#, and develops into a kind of fathead etude in loose variation form.

The composition of 41 Fathead was funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.


41 Fathead (2011)

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For Chamber Orchestra, Choir, and Electric Guitar Soloist
by Daniel Sonenberg

Performed by the University of Southern Maine Composers Ensemble
Daniel Sonenberg, Conductor
Jimmy Dority, Electric Guitar

This is a short concerto for electric guitar (featuring guitarist Jimmy Dority), choir and chamber orchestra. I love having an electric guitarist in the group alongside the more traditional, orchestral instruments. I recently acquired a beautiful small tube amplifier for my own guitar, and wrote this odd little concerto as a kind of celebration for tube circuitry. The choir’s text is drawn from the Wikipedia article on “Valve Amplifier” (with words culled almost at random, and sung electronically by the choir). At the climax of the piece, the text shifts to an uncredited 1928 New York Times article about the invention of a new kind of a vacuum tube, the UX 215, and its implications for improved volume and tone quality. The piece ends on an iconic and universally recognizable chord for guitar – a confirmation of the future heralded by that technological advance. 

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Delve (2013) by Daniel Sonenberg
composed for the Da Capo Chamber Players. 
Live performance at the University of Southern Maine
March 20, 2013

Patricia Spencer, flute
Meighan Stoops, clarinet and bass clarinet
Curtis Macomber, violin
and guest artists:
Jay Campbell, cello
Christopher Oldfather, piano