No Song is Safe From Us

No Song Is Safe From Us - The NYFOS Blog
 |  Sasha Cooke

I thought talking about living composers not yet featured on NYFOS programs would be enough to minimize the list of people I’d love to include- nope! Not the case. So I will have to let it go for now and pick up the topic another time because without a doubt, there are more composers to be talked about who excel writing for the voice- and thankfully so! Most recently, I’ve had the great joy of working on music by some well established composers but today I wanted to focus on someone relatively new on the scene with a powerfully unique ‘voice’: Lembit Beecher




 |  Sasha Cooke

This week I wanted to look at composers not yet featured on NYFOS programs who have exceptional ‘voices’ in the contemporary realm and more specifically, ones with a natural facility writing for the voice in particular. In Laura Kaminsky’s case, her entree into the opera world would not only have tremendous impact in the classical, social and artistic scenes, but she also would introduce a subject matter so current that soon thereafter it became a cultural obsession—the experience of being transgender.




 |  Sasha Cooke

I wanted to mention composers whose work is moving and has a knack for unleashing and accentuating the voice’s unique powers. And when I heard the music of David Bruce, I was struck! Here was a composer who had that open channel to the heart and somehow understood how the voice could help him illuminate that. I was so struck that I went out of my way during a recording job in London to see the premiere of his opera Nothing at Glyndebourne. I walked away with the feeling that it was the best premiere I’d ever seen.




 |  Sasha Cooke

So enter Joby Talbot. For the most part, Joby hadn’t written much vocal music when I met him. Like Caroline from yesterday, he’s done some crossover work and also written for countless movies, ballets and stage pieces. His Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the first full-length narrative ballet score to be commissioned by The Royal Ballet in 20 years. Not as much for the voice when Dallas Opera commissioned him for 2015. Gene Scheer had an idea for an opera and the two of them immediately hit it off. He is a magician when it comes to word and emotion and the simplicity that often allows them to serve one another so well.




 |  Sasha Cooke

Long story short, or long story long, for this week I thought it would be nice to celebrate that love and bring to the fore a few composers with truly unique and ‘vocal’ voices that HAVEN’T yet been featured on NYFOS programs. That also helps me simplify my list since NYFOS has done so many contemporary works and premieres! 🙂 So let me start with Caroline Shaw. I can have the fan girl moment and say we went to Rice together- same class actually, back when she was just incredibly brilliant and a violinist. Now a Grammy-winner and the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer, Caroline is doing unbelievable, truly revelatory things with music.