Search - Susan Kander :: Susan Kander Five Movements for My Father

For better or worse, I don t come from the academy, I come from the theater. My roots run deep in musical theater especially. Though these two song cycles Five Movements for my Father and A Cycle of Songs are quite different musically one from the other, they are both essentially mini-operas, monodramas: in each one, the singer portrays one character at critical moments over his or her lifetime. Music allows us to live more viscerally through these moments with them. Five Movements for my Father tells the story of a man s life: we meet him way back in the last century as an exuberant college student, follow him to 1930 s Paris as a young poet, return home with the excited GI after WWII. Decades later he looks back over his lengthening marriage and finally, now an old man after the turn of the 21st century, he vents his anger and sadness at the current state of his beloved America. The music loosely follows the times and locales, starting in the ultra-romantic 20th century, on to pointillist France, back to swing era USA, before drifting loose into the latter 20th century. I wrote this piece in 2005 for my father for his 82nd birthday. I think A Cycle of Songs, written in 1999, as a more real frau s Liebe und Leben. In the seven movements of the cycle from honeymoon, through pregnancy, children, exhaustion, sexual re-awakening, the balancing act between gaining grandchildren and losing parents we learn the very real, un-idealized story of a woman from the dreams she tells the person next to her in bed, until, finally, she has no dreams, for there is no one there to tell them to. I chose my marvelous singers Keith and Roberta not only for their delicious voices but because they each have a magical way of bringing characters to life with those voices. They make me feel warm through and through when they sing; they make me cry in all the right places. And laugh. And I believe their every word. Their sheer musicianship is thrilling. I am so very fortunate to hear my music performed to hear my characters brought to life by these two superb American singers. Clarinetist Lino Gomez plays throughout this album with exquisite style, élan and theatricality. Sublime cellist Eric Bartlett joins him dancing, flying and jazzing through Pas de Deux for Clarinet, Cello and Chimes, the sorbet between the two entrees. Maestro Mercurio brings the Five Movements into living, breathing focus while pianist Tom Schmidt and violinist Suzanne Ornstein, contribute, respectively, endless artistry and an elegant Grappelli swing.