Premiere: 14 April 2016 at Weyerhaeuser Auditorium, Landmark Center, St. Paul, MN. Alyssa Anderson, mezzo-soprano; Joe Spoelstra, guitar
Duration: ca. 10′
Instrumentation: Voice and piano (or guitar)
Score: View score
Performance note: My Apollinaire chansons are the latest in a series of vocal settings I’ve written for my friend, the mezzo-soprano Jan Zimmerman. For as long as I’ve known her, Jan’s been particularly enthusiastic about French songs: she specifically suggested my writing some for her as far back as 2009 and renewed her request again in 2015, at which point I crafted the current work. I’m not sure what first drew my attention to Apollinaire’s poems, but, on reading them, several resonated with me, musically; four of those (all from Alcools, published in 1913) comprise these Quatre chansons.