Peyee Chen (soprano) & Kate Ledger (piano) (05/08/17)

These songs set five poems by David Vogel, a Russian-born poet and novelist who died at Auschwitz in 1944.  The title is derived from Vogel's only published collection of poems (1923).  The Dark Gate was first performed in August 2017, and sheet music is published by UYMP.

The Dark Gate

I Breathe
II Writing
III Fragrance 
IV Drunk 
V Chaos 

Fragments consists of five miniatures and sets five very short poems by American poet Christopher Poindexter.  Christopher describes himself as an ‘observer’ and his book Naked Human is an exploration of humanity at its finest and at its worst. When reading his work, I found the succinctness of his words, the informal structures he uses and the thinking spaces they create very musical. Therefore, the five disconnected untitled poems have been arranged as such to link to Poindexter’s text to discover what makes us human.

Each fragment works to mirror the poems structure and tone, sometimes leaving enough space for ‘thoughts’ on each subject being presented and sometimes moving swiftly on- as fleetingly as written. The role of the vocalist is to be the voice of these ‘thoughts’ adding colour, emotion and movement in the intensity of each brief fragment.

Fragments

Contemporary composers, performed live.

Concerts of new music on the first Saturday of each month, March to October.

Peyee Chen (soprano) & Kate Ledger (piano) (05/08/17)

Late Music York