Rosśa Crean | Werifesteria (World Premiere)

Performed by Picosa 
Monday, April 21st, 2025   7:00pm
Allen Recital Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center
DePaul University

Quinn Middleman | mezzo soprano
Jennie Oh Brown | flutes
Andrea R. DiOrio | clarinets
Elizabeth Brausa Brathwaite | violin
Bruno Silva | viola
Paula Kosower | cello
Kuang-Hao Huang I piano
Michael Lewanski I conductor

Copyright ©️ 2025 Rosśa Crean/Knight & Thorne Music/ASCAP. All Rights Reserved.

Werifesteria, Mvt. 1

Keiko Araki and Emily Cole, violins

“Hiraeth” is a Welsh word with no direct English equivalent. It describes a profound, almost aching longing—for a home that may never have existed, for a time that cannot be returned to, for something felt more in the soul than in memory. It is nostalgia braided with loss, and love tempered by absence.

In this work for two violins, that untranslatable emotion becomes a dialogue. The instruments weave in and out of one another’s phrases and intonation, sometimes in close harmony, sometimes pulling apart into lonely melodic lines. Moments of stillness hover like breath held too long, while sudden surges of motion suggest flashes of memory or fleeting recognition.

The music draws on the duality of hiraeth: beauty and sorrow, connection and distance. Each player becomes both voice and echo, their interplay creating a shifting tapestry of timbre and tension. While the piece offers no resolution—no “return” to the place longed for—it invites listeners to dwell in the space between yearning and acceptance, where the heart finds its own language for what is gone.

Copyright ©️ 2025 Rosśa Crean/Knight & Thorne Music/ASCAP. All Rights Reserved.

Premiered by fEARnoMUSIC September 27, 2025.
Reed College, Portland, Oregon

Hiraeth (for two violins)

Chicago and December (2016)
Music by Ross Crean
Based on the poem "Chicago and December" by W. S. Di Piero

Sarah Thompson Johansen, Soprano
Stephen Uhl, Piano

Recorded by Aaron Gottl with WS Sound Recordings
Recorded live at Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL

Chicago and December

Lost Daughters - An Opera in One Act
Music by Ross Crean
Libretto by Katherine Arathoon

Recorded live at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, OH
Performed by the Oberlin Mozart Players
May 7th, 2017

Conducted by JP Jennings

The Queen of the Night - Katherine Bruton, Soprano
Clytemnestra - Jessica Hiltabidle, Mezzo-Soprano
Mrs. Darling - Marysa Abbas, Mezzo-Soprano

The Queen of the Night, Mrs. Darling, and Clytemnestra reconvene repeatedly to a desolate wasteland, where they return each time someone is done reading their stories. They then discuss the losses of each of their daughters, one by death, one by estrangement, and one by intervalic disappearance.
It's also about how these three very different women come together to express their grief and eventually, with the discovery that they relive this story and these feelings on repeat, decide to try and end the cycle.

Lost Daughters (An Opera in One Act)- Scene 4 (Excerpt)

Performed by soprano Katherine Bruton

Recorded by Daniel Johansen at Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago, IL
October 31, 2018

Project Directed by Maureen Smith
Produced by Ross Crean and Maureen Smith

Text by Lizette Woolworth Reese (1856-1935)
Written in 1926

Two things I did on Hallows Night:— 
Made my house April-clear;
Left open wide my door
To the ghosts of the year.

Then one came in. Across the room 
It stood up long and fair—
The ghost that was myself—
And gave me stare for stare.

Copyright 2019 Ross Crean/Knight & Thorne Music, ASCAP, International. All Rights Reserved.

"All Hallow's Eve" from the song cycle "Twilight Lifts the Veil"

Words and music by Rosśa Crean. Premiered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY, April 8, 2019.

Commissioned and performed by The New Consort.
Agnes Coakley Cox - Soprano
Caroline Olsen - Alto
Jeffrey Cutts - Countertenor
Steven Caldecott Wilson - Tenor
Brian Mummert - Bass

Since I was 18, I have had a fascination with the 16th Century experiments of John Dee and Edward Kelley’s with angelic communication. Dee, a mathematician, occult philosopher, and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, employed Kelley, a medium, to help him discover the secrets of nature and the supernatural through obsidian scrying. Their activities, inspired by the conjurations of King Solomon, lent a new perspective to what I had previously been educated about otherworldly communication. The events led to a remarkable amount of documentation, resulting in several tablets that named the angels that existed within each level of the hierarchy, as well as the documentation of Enochian, the language of the angels. While Dee and Kelley’s experiments may have very well been a figment of imagination, their extensive output has made many interfaith believers of Enochian Magick, be it Christian, Pagan, Jewish, or otherwise.

When Brian Mummert approached me to compose a piece for The New Consort, I knew that this was the topic on which to base the work. I immediately created text that followed style and structure of the Old Testament psalms, and in turn, created a different kind of liturgical piece, delving into secrets that ideologically are not considered any part of the religious canon. I wanted to create a sense of a different world beyond our own, one that might evoke fear, but also shows a sense of reverence, where we see a light of hope in a path not often turned down.

The Watchtower Psalms is the embodiment of the ceremony where the practitioner calls the four corners, otherwise known as the watchtowers. Each quadrant has an elemental angel assigned to it: EXARP (Air), HKOMA (Water), NANTA (Earth), and BITOM (Fire). Each of these angels has many classifications of other angels underneath them. Collectively, the four watchtowers form the Tablet of Union, a symbol of the Quintessence, the spiritual amalgamation of the quadrants becoming one. When the Watchtowers are all called, it is then that our divine natures can be found.

The Watchtowers each have an assigned direction, element, and color. As a synesthete, I composed each movement based on the colors and emotional reactions I had from each element. Their symbolism goes as follows:

EXARP - East/Air/Yellow 
HKOMA - West/Water/Blue 
NANTA - North/Earth/Black 
BITOM - South/Fire/Red

Many thanks to Brian Mummert and The New Consort for their commissioning of this work. I have had a blessed journey creating this piece for them.

I. Blood is the Spring (EXARP - East - Air)

Soft and whispering winds,
We stir and call you up,
Stir and call you up.
Blow clear, fresh, and free!
The blood is the Spring:
Sanguine, mercurial, and inspiring. It is the mind, the sword.
Our logic and reason
Whirl around, to and fro,
To the East
To the East
To the lessons we pray are bestowed. Stir and call you up,
Stir and call you up.
We are your travelers.

"Blood Is The Spring" from "The Watchtower Psalms"

From the monodrama "The Priestess of Morphine: A Study of Marie-Madeleine in the Time of the Nazis"
Libretto by Aiden K. Feltkamp
Music by Rosśa Crean

Premiered June 28th, 2019 at the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, IL.

Katherine Bruton, Soprano
Chuck Evans, violin
Stephen Hudson, cello
Ben Zucker, vibraphone

IV. Tumbling
(inspired by “Das Fieber,” “Kokaïn,” and “Der letzte Rausch”)

In darkness, in this terrible place
completely removed from the world, 
he approached without a sound, without warning... 
this monster, my uninvited guest…

My tired heart drags hotter
until the dream-clouds about me are violent red.
Shine, ever effervescent, 
fill me with a marrow-deep delight!

More! More!
Burn me inside
until wings sprout on my savage soul
and I fall 
headlong 
into the beckoning bottomless pit. 

I am always -- still! -- so long! -- stuck
in this cursed place,
this city so heavily damned
that it will never rise again. 
I can only groan with desire --
take me down, Thanatos!

I can’t breathe in these streets,
I can’t find a living body,
they’ve all forgotten----

My lips, worn down by fever,
cradle my last screech:
I need to get out!
I’m penned in all around--
these walls will outlast me. 
I have nothing left but you:
my most beloved, my very last ecstasy!

Copyright 2019 Rosśa Crean/Knight & Thorne Music/ASCAP. All Rights Reserved.
Text Under Ownership of Aiden K. Feltkamp.

The Priestess of Morphine, Mvt. IV - Tumbling

"No Eyes for Kaldowski" is the first movement of "Hellville," for clarinet and stomp boxes by composer Rosśa Crean. Written for and premiered by clarinetist Andy Hudson. Recorded live at Tew Recital Hall, UNCG, Greensboro, NC on February 13th, 2020.

"Hellville" is inspired by Thomas Ott's graphic novel "Greetings from Hellville."

No Eyes for Kaldowski

I. "No Eyes for Kaldowski" from "Hellville"

Composed, Performed, and Recorded by Rosśa Crean on May 3, 2020 at Room 13 of Lakeside Inn, Lakeside, MI.

Other than reverb, all effects are produced naturally by the human voice. No other electronics are added or involved.

Chaennuna (for Solo Bass Voice)

Blianta agus blianta

Recorded in Room 13 at Lakeside Inn, Lakeside, MI
May 2020
Recorded by Rosśa Crean
Mixed by Aaron Paolucci

Written and Performed by Rosśa Crean

Phonemena II

R'lyehian Love Poems - III. y'orr'e throd ng ahy'lloig

Performed by Blake Friedman, Tenor and Ellie Kirk, Harp

Text by W. S. Di Piero

Recorded at Experimental Sound Studios, Chicago, IL

Rosśa Crean

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