Lyric soprano Lilian Tong performs Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Alexander Theroux's poem MARRIAGE for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 1 (July 7th, 2023).

Poem MARRIAGE by Alexander Theroux:

"Any enjoyment is weakened when shared."—DeSade

What holds down a carpet? Tacks.
Theory's nice, but not facts.
And while sweetness surely attracts,
Remember, honey makes wax.

The composer has received permission by the author to set this poem to music. Poem published in Collected Poems (Fantagraphics), copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux.

For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

MARRIAGE for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 1; poem by Alexander Theroux

Lyric soprano Lilian Tong performs Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Alexander Theroux's poem GHOSTS IN THE RAIN for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 2 (July 9th, 2023). 

Poem GHOSTS IN THE RAIN by Alexander Theroux

I saw in that black slant of rain
the rising ghosts of the sheeted slain
from all my recollected pain

and recollecting all that pain
that rose with all the blackened slain
slanting through the ghosts of rain

brought back like black to me so slain
in the recollected sheets of rising pain
all the ghosts in the slant of rain.

Poem copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux from Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics); Music copyright © 2023 by Gary Lloyd Noland • BMI

For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

GHOSTS IN THE RAIN for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 2; poem by Alexander Theroux

Lyric soprano Lilian Tong performs Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Alexander Theroux's poem WHEN I FELL IN LOVE for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 3. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com  For information on novelist/essayist/poet Alexander Theroux, Google his name. For information on lyric soprano Lilian Tong, please visit her website at: https://www.lilian-tong.com/

WHEN I FELL IN LOVE WITH YOU; poem by Alexander Theroux

When I fell in love with you
I felt so famous in my own eyes,
filled with such a force

and famished for the size
of the fame of falling fullness,
finally finding love,

I could feel almost faint
with force and as filled with fame
as love is with surprise.

When I fell in love with you
I felt equally frail in my own eyes,
filled less with force and fire

than famished for the feel
of the fearful force of falling in love,
fat with a filled feeling,

almost faint as famous,
and as fully frightful of falling is
when I fell for you.  

Poem copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux from Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics)
Music copyright © 2023 by Gary Lloyd Noland

WHEN I FELL IN LOVE for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 3; poem by Alexander Theroux

Lyric soprano Lilian Tong performs Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Alexander Theroux's poem EVERYONE'S HEAD DESCRIBES A BUM for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 6 (August 13th, 2023). For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com For information on novelist/essayist/poet Alexander Theroux, Google his name. For information on lyric soprano Lilian Tong, please visit her website at: www.lilian-tong.com/



Everyone's Head Descirbes a Bum
poem by Alexander Theroux

Everyone's head describes a bum.
It seats you for the life you have to face.
In the way it beats you it's a drum.
I own up to mine with some disgrace.
Bounce it down the stairway of the years,
With its wrinkles, buttock cheeks, and tears,
Born of bumps and thumps and slaps and fears.

Music copyright © 2023 by Gary Lloyd Noland • BMI
Poem copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux from Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics) 
The  composer has received permission by the author to set this poem to music.

EVERYONE'S HEAD DESCRIBES A BUM for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 6; poem by Alexander Theroux

Lyric soprano Lilian Tong performs Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Alexander Theroux's poem ETERNAL RECURRENCE for alto & soprano, Op. 147, No. 8. For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: www.garynolandcomposer.com For information on novelist/essayist/poet Alexander Theroux, Google his name. For information on lyric soprano Lilian Tong, please visit her website at: www.lilian-tong.com/

Poem "Eternal Recurrence" by Alexander Theroux

Isn't it just like you
to say because I find you loathsome
I'm bitter at the world?

Don't you need me to lie
about you the easier for you to deny
you yourself are a churl?

So why not indict a world
in which a swine so mean and small
fobs himself off as a pearl?

Poem copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux from Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics)
Music copyright © 2023 by Gary Lloyd Noland • BMI

ETERNAL RECURRENCE for alto & soprano, Op. 147, No. 8; poem by Alexander Theroux

Lyric soprano Lilian Tong sings Gary Lloyd Noland's setting of Alexander Theroux's poem VULTURES LA CHOPMIST for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 4 (August 23rd, 2023). For more information on composer Gary Lloyd Noland, please visit his website at: www.garynolandcomposer.com For information on novelist/essayist/poet Alexander Theroux, Google his name. For information on lyric soprano Lilian Tong, please visit her website at: www.lilian-tong.com/

Poem "Vultures la Chopmist" by Alexander Theroux

Vultures are black and blue
like razors, and like fearful razors sharp
claw the seaside stair.

where, gathering to carp
to rainy Chopmist with their cries of rue,
they flap above the weir,

bleak in the seawet air,
and echoes seem along that gloomy tarp
to shriek a death is due.

Poem copyright © 2015 by Alexander Theroux from Collected Poems (published by Fantagraphics)
Music copyright © 2023 by Gary Lloyd Noland • BMI

VULTURES LA CHOPMIST for soprano & alto, Op. 147, No. 4; poem by ALEXANDER THEROUX

Resides in Portland, Oregon. Grew up in Berkeley, CA. Born in Seattle.  PhD, Harvard. “Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO, “...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer, "...a fleet-fingered, ebullient performer ... bright, witty and engaging.”—CHRISTIAN CAREY, SPLENDID MAGAZINE, “...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.” —ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, “...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, “...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer, “I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...florid and juicy...” —RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE, “...an incredible aural web ... a great ostinato of American kitsch. Sul pont never sounded so good.”—RUSSELL STEINBERG, composer, conductor of the LOS ANGELES YOUTH ORCHESTRA, “...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!” —ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “... remarkable stuff...”
—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author, “...a loony composer from Oregon...” —MAX SHEA, WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA, “Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism ... Zany waltzes, ragtime riffs, chorales, toccatas, and much else romp and tear through these depictions of superheroes and villains from his ‘chamber novels’; other pieces spoof serial music ... to grand operas ... and Jewish guilt.” —JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA, “...It’s a romantic romp, rhythmically robust yet melodically flirting with the nostalgia of cabaret, minus the sleazy diminution of spilled drinks and smelly ashtrays. Its elegance recalls Elgar, and the serious sides, a synthesis of those strange bedfellows Schubert and Ives. Composers hate it when their music reminds you of someone else’s, but writing within a tradition, Noland has incorporated divergent styles that, woven together, work. Cosmopolitan without snobbery, it’s intelligent, pleasurable and convincing.” —ROCKY LEPLIN, THE BERKELEY VOICE

New tracks tagged #soprano &amp; alto

New tracks tagged #soprano & alto