I’m very excited to have a commission from a great group of singers in New York, the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. The piece will be featured on a concert with two other new works inspired by or loosely related to the pleasure principle (I have to admit…I’m not quite sure what the pleasure principal means…but I think it’s suppose to feel good). As of now I’m leaning towards setting some Haiku’s by the 17th and 18th century Japanese poets Basho and Issa. Normally I’m quite nervous about setting poetry, because when it’s good poetry I usually feel like there’s nothing I can add to it (poetry itself is already a kind of perfect spoken music, right?). But, with these Haiku’s I feel like there is such a wonderful humor and charm about them that music mighty actually complement the text in a satisfying way. Plus, the haiku form is so terse that there is a lot of room for different text-setting strategies. Like, I can either set it literally with no changes or repetitions or do some renaissance, mass-style, super repetition stuff, or maybe some more adventurous chop-up, weird sequencing stuff. I don’t know. I think it will be a suite so I get to try it a bunch of different ways!
Anyway, I’d love to see you at the premiere.
St.Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Ave
6.5.2010, 8:00 PM