Penelope (mezzo + orchestra; album version)

(2009)  Duration: 60′.  11-song cycle with three instrumental interludes.  Songs can be performed separately.  Words by Ellen McLaughlin.

for perc (2): glock, vib, bike bell, egg shaker, sus cym., BD, gro, tri., tamb., 2 crot., fing cymb. — drums — hp — e-gtr, e-bass — mezzo-soprano — strings (minimum 3-3-3-3-1) — laptop.

Commissioned by: Signal and Shara Worden.
World Premiere: April 3, 2010 by Shara Worden and Signal at The Bell House, Brooklyn, NY.

1. The Stranger with the Face of a Man I Loved (5:44)
2. This Is What You’re Like (5:07)
3. The Honeyed Fruit (string quartet and electronics) (:54)
4. The Lotus Eaters (6′)
5. Nausicaa (3′)
6. Circe and the Hanged Man (4:16)
7. I Died of Waiting (string quartet and electronics)(1:10)
8. Home (6:23)
9. Dead Friend (2:48)
10. Calypso (4:46)
11. And Then You Shall Be Lost Indeed (string quartet and electronics) (1:09)
12. Open Hands (1:06)
13. Baby Teeth, Bones, and Bullets (6:10)
14. As He Looks Out to Sea (5:51)

Program Notes:

Penelope is a 60-minute song cycle for female voice, chamber orchestra, and electronics, based on texts by playwright Ellen McLaughlin.  It is also the name of the music-theater piece I co-wrote with Ellen in 2007, commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Center, from which the song cycle was derived (that version of the music found here.)  Penelope the song cycle loosely tells the story of the theater work: A woman’s husband appears at her door after an absence of 20 years, suffering from brain damage. A veteran of a modern war, he doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know who he’s become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads him The Odyssey, and in the journey of that book, she finds a way into her former husband’s memory.

Penelope, the album, was recorded in 2010 for New Amsterdam Records by vocalist Shara Worden and Signal, the highly acclaimed chamber orchestra led by conductor Brad Lubman.  Lawson White of New York’s Clinton Studios produced the album, and laptop artist Michael Hammond contributed electronics-based sound design.  The world premiere of the concert version of Penelope was given by Shara Worden and Signal (conducted by Brad Lubman) on April 3, 2010 at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY.  The world premiere of the music-theater version of Penelope was given by Ellen McLaughlin and the Eclipse Quartet on February 1, 2008, at the J. Paul Getty Villa, in Malibu, CA.