Vocal Music by Frank Felice

The ending music from the Butler University Theatre department's presentation of "The Lamentation Project;"  the music here was presented live in their black box space with the keyboard parts played via fixed media recordings, while a street urchin treble sang various parts of the Lamentations 5:21 text live, with reverb FX added.  The treble here is Simon Roberts.

Converte Nos, from "Lamentations"

Composed for the wedding of Angela Peterson and Scott Winter, it's poetry is by the colonial poet, Anne Bradstreet, her poem "To My Dear and Loving Husband."  This music is very loving, impassioned, and worked well for her wedding.  It is available in two other versions: one for organ, and another for chamber wind ensemble.

If Ever Two Were One (soprano and string quartet version)

An impressionistic song cycle setting four poems of Jennifer Haines, written when she was fifteen years of age -- the music is often wistful, sometimes sad, nostalgic, but defiant at the end.

Cassaundra

Abstract Thought

An Unheard of Word

A Windburnt Spot in the Dream

My friend Derrick Pennix shared a long bus ride with a young girl and her father, and over the course of that ride became fast friends - over the course of many years they wrote a number of letters, and later Derrick commissioned me to write a song cycle based on those letters.  Tammy Randa was a Chicago sports team supporter, wrote very vividly about the very family 'accidents" and wrote to Derrick about what of her initial crushes.  The music is often very Charles Ives-like.

First Lines

Accidentals

No...

Sporting Life

Last Lines

One of the movements from my soprano and orchestral song cycle "The Pre-Sleep Mental Dances," to a number of poems by Tara Ericksen Smith - the whole cycle seems to spin from one surreal dream to another --  in this one the vocalist is not quite asleep, but somewhere in her brain, a nagging thought is trying to awaken her -  this recording is from the piano reduction version.

Frustrated Distance from "The Pre-Sleep Mental Dances"

Preserve Me, O God is a piece that I promised to write for my wife shortly after hearing her sing as a soloist for the first time at the University of Minnesota.  It had a long gestation, and I wrote nearly ten other false starts before completing this piece.  I had asked her what her favorite sacred text was, and she replied that it was the sixteenth psalm.  She liked one translation of this text, and I liked another, and so eventually I went back to the original Hebrew and with a dozen English translations and Strong’s Bible Dictionary before me produced the paraphrase for this piece.  The Good News Bible lists this a “prayer of confidence,” and my setting of the text reflects that along with my reading that David is claiming the Lord for his own throughout (“You are MY Lord”). This psalm also enumerates a number of the excellent things that God has given the psalmist (as well as mentioning the less-than-excellent sorrows that come to those who chase after other ‘gods.’).  The text is set largely syllabically for the soloist, accompanied by contrapuntal backgrounds and a bit of pedal-based tintinnabulation underneath them, utilizing a modal, accessible musical language.  This seems to illustrate a kind of dialogue between soloist and quartet, somewhat like a congregation engaging in active, vocal participation with the preacher’s reading. This exaltation, while restrained, is both emotional and reverent.
 
composed for Mitzi Westra
performed by Mitzi Westra and the New Century String Quartet 
November 2016

Preserve Me, O God

I am an eclectic composer who writes with a postmodern mischievousness: my pieces can be comedic/ironic, simple/complex, or humble/reverent. My recent projects have taken a turn toward turn towards the sweeter side, exploring a consonant adiatonicism.

Vocal Music by Frank Felice

FRANK FELICE, composer