Cædmon’s Hymn excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides 
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

New York Virtuoso Singers
Harold Rosenbaum, conductor
David Enlow, organ
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Cædmon’s Hymn is the oldest English of known authorship.  It was written in the 7th century by the poet Cædmon, supposedly from divine inspiration.  My setting of the text, for chorus and organ, begins with four members of the chorus speaking the opening line of the poem in Old English, the intention being to evoke the atmosphere of the time and place of the hymn’s creation.  The work was commissioned by and is dedicated to the South Bend (Indiana) Chamber Singers, Nancy Menk, Music Director, and organist David Eicher.

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Cædmon's Hymn excerpt

Five for Piano - 4. A Trace excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Blair McMillen, piano 
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering 

Five for Piano
These five short pieces for solo piano were inspired by five different poems: June-bug Serenade by E.E. Cummings’s poem spring omnipotent goddess thou dost; Shadow No More by James Wright’s The Shadow and the Real; Demon Cloud by Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone; A Trace by Joseph Brodsky’s Seven Strophes; and The Jolly Mortals by Robert Burns’s See the smoking bowl before us.  Five for Piano is dedicated to the memory of pianist Rowland Sturges (1917-2007), my teacher and friend.  The recording is by pianist Blair McMillen, who also gave the work’s premiere performance. 

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Five For Piano - 4. A Trace excerpt

Autumnal excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Krista River, mezzo-soprano
Donald Berman, piano 
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades.  They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.  

James Wright (1927-1980) was a true visionary poet, and I have set two of his texts, Autumnal and Snowstorm in the Midwest.  Both have elements of what one writer described as Wright's style of "pastoral surrealism, built around strong images and a simple spoken rhetoric."  I found the rhythms of these poems particularly compelling and right for musical settings.  Wright once said, "Poetry comes to me first of all through its sound," and these two poems are evidence of his remarkable ear. 

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Autumnal excerpt

Snowstorm In The Midwest excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Donald Berman, piano 
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

James Wright (1927-1980) was a true visionary poet, and I have set two of his texts, Autumnal and Snowstorm in the Midwest. Both have elements of what one writer described as Wright's style of "pastoral surrealism, built around strong images and a simple spoken rhetoric." I found the rhythms of these poems particularly compelling and right for musical settings. Wright once said, "Poetry comes to me first of all through its sound," and these two poems are evidence of his remarkable ear.

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Snowstorm In The Midwest excerpt

Storm excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

I have set two poems, Storm and Sea Rose, by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886-1961), who was one of the first "imagist" poets.  Imagism was a literary movement of the early 20th century developed by Ezra Pound and the English philosopher and poet T. E. Hulme, which emphasized precise, concrete visual poetics in contrast to the flowery, verbose and abstract language characteristic of the Romantic era.      

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Storm excerpt

Labrador excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

I've also composed settings of two poems by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), who is also considered one of the imagists.  Labrador describes the remarkable landscape and atmosphere of this Canadian region, while The Defective Record is an indictment of the environmental destruction being done to our planet.    

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Labrador excerpt

The Defective Record excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

I've also composed settings of two poems by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), who is also considered one of the imagists.  Labrador describes the remarkable landscape and atmosphere of this Canadian region, while The Defective Record is an indictment of the environmental destruction being done to our planet.    

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The Defective Record excerpt

The Fields Of November excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

The Fields of November, by the poet, writer and critic Mark Van Doren (1894-1972), is actually a poem I have set twice. The first version was a very early work which I eventually discarded. Several years later I decided to try again and would like to think this setting is considerably better. 

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The Fields Of November excerpt

Insomnia excerpt
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Krista River, mezzo-soprano 
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

Several years after I set Elizabeth Bishop's (1911-1979) poem, Insomnia, I read an interview with her in which she said she "never liked Insomnia" and that her friend, the poet Marianne Moore, said it was a "cheap love poem" and had been very opposed to her publishing it. Bishop mentioned that the composer Elliott Carter had set Insomnia to music (something I hadn't realized at the time) and she felt "it sounded much better as a song." I personally feel it is both a wonderful poem and a fine text for a song setting.  

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Insomnia excerpt

Memory Of Summer Facing West excerpt 
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Krista River, mezzo-soprano 
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

I read Memory of Summer Facing West by W.S. Merwin (1927-2019) in The New Yorker magazine when it was first published in 1975. This short poem evoked powerful feelings of the landscape and atmosphere where I grew up in Michigan and Ohio.    

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Memory Of Summer Facing West excerpt

The Politician excerpt 
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, Sir John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

The Politician is by Spencer Appling, brother of the musician William Appling with whom I studied and worked for many years. Spencer gave me a copy of his collection of poetry, Train Windows, when it was published in 1995, and I immediately decided to set this poem, which compares a crocodile and his habitat to a slimy politician.

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The Politician excerpt

Garden Abstract excerpt 
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Krista River, mezzo-soprano
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

Garden Abstract is by Hart Crane (1899-1932), a poet I learned about early in my life as he was close friends with William Sommer, a well-known Ohio artist who worked with my great-uncle, Thomas Marker, on a number of projects. Crane dedicated a poem called Sunday Morning Apples to Sommer. Garden Abstract is from Crane's first collection, White Buildings, and is one of the less obscure works by a notably obscure poet.     

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Garden Abstract excerpt

To One Who Revisited An Old Garden excerpt 
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

Krista River, mezzo-soprano
Donald Berman, piano
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

Songs for voice and piano

The songs recorded here are among those I've written over the course of several decades. They are all individuals songs (no cycles) and the texts are primarily by American writers, although three are by British poets: Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and Catherine Kirsopp.

My maternal grandmother, Janet Marker Kiskadden, kept a diary in which she pasted clippings from newspapers of names she found funny ("Wilmo Weevie," "Webster D. Junk, Funeral Director," "Belcher Wedlock," "Miss Ida Pudgush," "Ray Messmaker," "Mr. and Mrs. Arlo Barlow," etc.), cartoons, news articles, and poems which she had either clipped, copied out or written herself. One of the poems was To One Who Revisited An Old Garden by Catherine Kirsopp. Kirsopp was an English poet who wrote in the early part of the 20th century, though I do not believe any collection of her work was ever published.

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To One Who Revisited An Old Garden excerpt

These Last Gifts excerpt 
Album: Where the Shadow Glides
Release Date: July 22, 2022 on Naxos

New York Virtuoso Singers
Harold Rosenbaum, conductor
Adam Abeshouse - Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Editing, Mastering

This piece, for a cappella chorus, is a setting of Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of an elegiac poem by the Latin poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54 BC). The poem spoke powerfully to me as it addresses the premature death of a brother, something I experienced myself. It was on a journey to Bithynia, what is today a part of northwestern Turkey, that Catullus visited the grave of his brother and wrote this lament. The work was premiered by the Harmonium Choral Society of Morristown, New Jersey, Anne Matlack, Artistic Director.

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William McClelland

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