CONTENTS
House to Half, from the musical revue "House to Half"
I've Never Wanted Anyone Before, from the musical "Together"
(And Then) I Let Him Go, from the musical "I Hear America Singing"
I Believe in Song, from the musical "I Hear America Singing"
Remember How it Was? from the musical "I Hear America Singing"
Love Comes With a Knife, from the opera "A Woman in Morocco"
Ferry Me Across the Water, from the operafilm "9/10: Love Before the Fall"
Introduction:
So, why this anthology of songs? Because these are among the many vocal set pieces that I’ve composed over the past 45 years that fall between genres and, as a result, frustrate partisans. Casting singers with “interesting” voices (read: not traditionally attractive) in bel canto roles is still not done that often, and that’s too bad. When a composer finds an “interesting” voice more compelling in the theater than a “beautiful” one, traditionalists still question the composer’s judgment, no matter how many “cross-genre” labels are pasted on the show. Matters get muddled when composers create cross-genre shows by accident—the result is sort of like driving a Ferrari like a family car.
These numbers are intentionally infused with 70s 16 beat soft rock, 8 beat calypso, “American Songbook,” and “Pet Sounds” feels commonly (though erroneously) assumed to be either Shibuya-kei, M.O.R., or kitsch.
House to Half was completed on November 5th, 1980, in Madison, Wisconsin. With lyrics by Ed Flesch, it served as the opening number of a revue of the same name produced by the UW-Madison Opera and directed by Karlos Moser. The show ran for five performances during January 1981.
I’ve Never Wanted Anyone Before is drawn from the musical Together, for which I contributed book, lyrics, and music in July and August 1976 in New Berlin, Wisconsin. I revised the song at Yaddo during September 1998, adding a B section and a bridge, after playing and singing the original version on a dare for New York theatrical producer and arts advocate Harold Reed, who commissioned a revised version, which I introduced at a private salon at his home later that fall.
During winter 2013 and the early months of 2014 I wrote the score, lyrics and book on commission from the Skylight Music Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for I Hear America Singing, which had a month-long commercial run during March 2014. Three songs are included from that musical, (And Then) I Let Him Go, based on the folk tune Liza Jane, Remember How it Was? (a duet in the show, revised to be a solo song for this collection), and I Believe in Song.
Follows a song from the 2015 opera A Woman in Morocco, a verismo two act noir about a young American writer who comes to Morocco during the late 50s to write about human trafficking and falls prey to a pair of men whose illegal activities she is on the verge of exposing. Love Comes With a Knife reoccurs throughout the opera at key moments, emanating from an onstage shortwave radio and sung by a “nightclub singer” named Minerva Mudd. The lyric is adapted from a poem by the great 13th century Persian poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī.
Ferry Me Across the Water, from 9/10: Love Before the Fall, is a tune woven throughout the score, heard on the radio in an Italian bistro on the night before the attack on the Twin Towers. The operafilm opened at film festivals in 2023.