Search - James Demler, Darynn Zimmer :: Daron Hagen: Bandanna

Milwaukee-born Daron Hagen made his debut as a composer in 1983 and has had his music performed by major soloists, ensembles and orchestras. A graduate of both the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, he has achieved his greatest fame as a composer of art songs, and is continuing a great American tradition, having had Leonard Bernstein, David Diamond and Ned Rorem as his mentors. Opera, therefore, for him is a natural expression. As Tim Page writes, ?Daron Hagen?s Bandanna?is as fierce as verismo but wrought with infinite care; a melding of church and cantina and Oxonian declamation, a work that would have been recognized by creators as diverse as Virgil Thomson, Silvestre Revueltas and Irving Berlin?Hagen combines intellectual rigor and dramatic intelligence with melodies that can actually be sung and remembered and ? even with the unusual ensemble for which Bandanna was written (strings are only heard as part of a mariachi band) ? his orchestration might! serve as a textbook lesson in economy and clarity?As Hagen himself put it, ?(this is) an aggressive, manic, emotionally overwrought, progressive piece of American Opera, equal parts opera and music theatre???