(Culminating version, Oct. 21st, 2017 at the Gabriela Lena Frank Academy of Music -  subsequent tweaks expected.)

Please Me, Place Me is a work that calls into question 'who?' without further explanation.

Our soprano is at once in the process of storytelling and recollecting, both directing and reflecting, while at the same time communicating with the string quartet and you, the audience. Her identity is unknown, her experience of time is unsure, and she is grasping hold of what she can say with certainty. These words are those of Gertrude Stein: Stanza in Meditation, Part 3, no. 3. John Ashbery, speaking of this collection of poems, states:

'Perhaps the word that occurs oftenest in the Stanzas is the word "they," for this is a poem about the world, about "them..." Less frequently, "I" enters to assess the activities of "them," to pick up after them, to assert his own altered importance. As we get deeper into the poem, it seems not so much as if we were reading as living a rather long period of our lives with a houseful of people.'

The joy of making music is that there is never a 'me' alone. Music exists between people– and thus, I wonder who the 'me' is that I'm referring to in the title.

Please Me, Place Me (2017), for soprano and string quartet. Tony Arnold and Third Angle

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