Rumi, Michael Klein, Jaime Manrique (E)
to purchase please see "Songs for Baritone and Piano"
Abbreviations (PDF)
Boosey & Hawkes
"Quietness" is a tiny Rumi poem, exhorting the reader to follow a meditative path through surrender to ecstacy. Each line, Haiku- like, reveals an insight. Some are paradoxical, others profound.
Michael Klein's "Drinking Song" is a pisser. In my obstreperous setting the piano is the drunk — rough, relentless, seductive, "dangerous." Never sure of his safety or whether he's "riding" a "dolphin" or a "shark," the poet (like the singer) hangs on for dear life—that is, till the last line.
"Matthew Shepard" by Jaime Manrique touched me. The brutal homophobic death of this innocent resonated with my own loss through AIDS of a young lover, Paul. To surround with music that moment when the soul leaves the body, that transformation of pain into bliss, was my inspiration and challenge.
– DAVID DEL TREDICI