COLORED STONES

Composer's note:

Richard Howard’s poems are meant to be heard, as anyone who has read them aloud will tell you. In this song cycle I’ve recast his ten-part poem Colored Stones into two simultaneous readings by two different voices: that of the singer, and that of the piano (itself a collection of “colored stones.”) Heard together, these two voices create ten miniature states of mind, each one as much about person (reader, listener, character) as about place (the poem’s ten locales) and thing (castle, canyon, grave, quarry). Colored Stones is dedicated to the memory of my teachers, Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Robert Parris, and Goffredo Petrassi.