FOUR AMERICAN SONGS (2017), song variations for soprano and piano

premiere performance from the 92nd St Y, February 3, 2023

Ariadne Greif, soprano
Steven Beck, piano

(o purple finch), e.e. cummings

“o purple finch
please tell me why
this summer world (and you and I
who love so much to live)
must die”
“if I
should tell you anything”
(that eagerly sweet carolling
self answers me)
“I could not sing”



MANDOLIN AND LIQUEURS, Wallace Stevens

La-la! The cat is in the violets
And the awnings are let down.
The cat should not be where she is
And the awnings are too brown,
Emphatically so.
If awnings were celeste and gay,
Iris and orange, crimson and green,
Blue and vermillion, purple and white,
And not this tinsmith's galaxy,
Things would be different.
The sun is gold, the moon is silver.
There must be a planet that is copper
And in whose light the roses
Would have a most singular appearance,
Or nearly so.
I love to sit and read the Telegraph,
That vast confect of telegrams,
And to find how much that really matters
Does not really matter
At all.



LOVE SONG, William Carlos Williams

I lie here thinking of you:—
The stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branches that lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world—
you far off there, under
the wine-red selvage of the west!
I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.



Chaplinesque, Hart Crane

We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.
For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!
And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.
The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Four American Songs (2017) for soprano and piano

A home demo from 2012. Composed and performed by Vincent Russo.

Demo 2012

children building this rainman out of snow (Demo 2012)

Composed in 2011 in response to a commission by Margaret and Michael Flanagan to write a short piece for the wedding of their daughter Orla, who conducts the Mornington Singers in Dublin, the choir which premiered the piece. My setting of e.e. cummings' “i carry your heart” (from '95 Poems', 1958) is quite opulent in terms of its harmony and lets the text lead the way in terms of structure and flow.
Performed by the NDR Choir, Germany, conducted by Philipp Ahmann, from the album "nine (birds) here" (Es-Dur label, ES2081)

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Unbekanntes Album (28.11.2019 09:43:42)

i carry your heart

Vincent Russo has been composing music since 1988. He is a self taught musician on both guitar and keyboards. While growing up on Long Island, Vincent explored rock, blues, jazz and western classical music. Over the years Vincent has produced a wide range of works from chamber, symphonic, choral as well as more pop oriented and electronic styles of music.

In recent years Paul Brantley’s compositions have been performed or commissioned by The Knights (at Tanglewood, BRIC, Dumbarton Oaks and Naumburg Concerts), Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, Horszowski Trio, Flux Quartet, New Esterházy Quartet, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, U.C. Berkeley Chamber Chorus (on tour), Monadnock Music Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, St. Bartholomew's Summer Festival of Sacred Music, The Young People’s Chorus of NYC, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (NYC’s Town Hall), Left Bank Ensemble (Kennedy Center), Ethel (Kimmel Center), Excelsior Trombone Ensemble (NPR’s Performance Today), The Goliard Ensemble on tour, The Manhattan School of Music Symphony, Belladonna (Schubert Club, St. Paul, MN), L’Opera du Village (Pourrieres, France), SONYC (the Kitchen), and as featured composer on these various series: Bargemusic, Ecstatic Music (Merkin Hall), The Harry Jacobs Chamber Music Society, HVG, North River, MOSA and Concerts in the Heights. 

His cello concertino, The Royal Revolver, was premiered in December 2017 by cellist Eric Jacobsen (The Knights, Silk Road Project) and members of The University of Michigan Symphony conducted by Kenneth Kiesler. The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra will give 25th anniversary performances of On the Pulse of Morning this May, with Abigail Fischer, soprano, Spring 2021. It was recently announced that Brantley is one of three winners of the Aliénor Composition Competition sponsored by the Historical Keyboard Association of North America to compose a new full-length piece for solo harpsichord. Boyd Meets Girl recently gave the premiere of Filles de l’Elysee which will featured on their forthcoming CD.

Paul is a six-time MacDowell Colony Fellow who has also received fellowships from Banff Centre and Anderson Center. Brantley has been composer-in-residence for Monadnock Music Festival, Gabriel Fauré Conservatoire (Angoulême, France), Goliard Ensemble, Yara Arts Group, The Seal Bay Festival, Children’s Choral Celebration, Sewanee Music Festival, Washington and Lee University, and the Sophia Institute at Union Theological Seminary in NYC. He has given composition seminars at Yale School of Music, Hunter College (Anthropology Dept.), and The University of Michigan School of Music.

Multifaceted musician, Brantley has performed or recorded as solo cellist with Trey Anastasio (Phish), Cantata Profana, CITH, Cassatt Quartet, Jeff Coffin Mutet, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Dave Gregory (XTC), Heartbeat Opera, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Lenny White, and SONYC. Brantley has arranged and conducted for David Binney, Ethel, Todd Rundgren, and Christian Scott.

Paul studied at Manhattan School of Music (B.M), Curtis Institute (diploma), Eastman School of Music (M.M.) as well as Fontainebleau, Tanglewood, and The Yellow Barn where he was later artist faculty. His principal teachers include Samuel Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Eicher, Alan Harris, David Loeb, Ned Rorem, and David Wells.

He co-founded the Seal Bay Festival of American Music and was artist faculty at Yellow Barn Music Festival for many years. In addition to positions at Syracuse University and Washington and Lee University, Brantley was a Manhattan School of Music faculty member from 2000 to 2014.

Paul Brantley currently resides in New York City where he free-lances as a composer, cellist, and conductor. His music is published by Bill Holab Music and Oxford University Press. He has recorded solo cello for Sony/Columbia, Rounder, Warner Bros., Polydor, Compass, and others.

VISIT MY NEW BANDCAMP PAGE: https://ianwilson2.bandcamp.com/

Ian Wilson (Belfast, 1964) has composed over 200 works in many different genres which have been performed and broadcast on six continents. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s national association of creative artists, and his music is published by G. Ricordi & Co. Ltd and Universal Edition. 
Visit: www.ianwilson.ie

New tracks tagged #e.e. cummings