(un)World Days

Lost Head

Cassandra

Written: 2016-17
Duration: ca. 20'
Instrumentation: bass-baritone and piano
Mostly Modern Festival: Matthew Treviño, bass; Amir Farid, piano
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: 
http://www.billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=103_137&products_id=2763
View Score: https://issuu.com/robertpaterson/docs/paterson_night_songs__score-perusal
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/night-songs

MOVEMENTS
I. City Dusk (Text by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
II. Lullaby (Text by W. H. Auden)
III. Birds Appearing in a Dream (Text by Michael Collier)
IV. Insomnia (Text by Dana Gioia)
V. Flying at Night (Text by Ted Kooser)

PROGRAM NOTE
Night Songs is a song cycle consisting of settings of poems by different poets that reflect on various aspects of nighttime. The cycle is structured as a somewhat linear timeline, as if the songs are meditations by a single individual.

The cycle begins with a setting of City Dusk by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a nostalgic exploration of the memories someone might have as he or she sits in the park at dusk. This person is in the park as the lights go down, and begins to feel sad, but remembers a time when this place wasn’t dark and lonely, but filled with lights, music, and people. He also remembers one specific person, a woman with blonde hair who loved to dance, who in this case, I interpreted as my wife Victoria. The second song, Lullaby, is a setting of the poem of the same name by W. H. Auden, and is a constructed as a love song sung to someone who is sleeping, and is about the inevitability of death, and looking after someone you love. In the third song, a setting of Birds Appearing in a Dream by Michael Collier, I use bird-like motivic patterns to provide structure for the colorful, figurative descriptions throughout Collier's text. The fourth song is a setting of Insomnia by Dana Gioia. In this poem, the narrator is full of regret, and finally realizes the value of people over possessions. The final song, a setting of Flying at Night by Ted Kooser, is a poem that is all at once about what the title suggests, but also about how so much of what we experience is interconnected and tied together by light.

Night Songs was commissioned by David Neal and made possible, in part, with funding from The Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

Night Songs - V. Flying at Night (Text by Ted Kooser)

Misery Love's Parking Lot's (pt2) (Documenting Dystopia)

The Lead

A music representation of time passing. 
--
Photo by Marcin Skalij on Unsplash

As time goes by

As time goes by – Ambient & Cinematic Music

Blue Collar

Here I Am - Kristopher Bolin & Combstead

From third album - "TOO BLUE"
available where all digital music is sold

Too Blue

Gone Fishing

Don't be Evil

TRANSITION

Love

Don't be Evil

The Fall of Saigon