Lynne Vardaman’s Concerts of American Music are comprised of music for soprano and piano, some piano alone and of reading or recitation of prose or poetry. The spoken portions are related to the theme of the program and are often by the same poets and authors from whom the texts of the songs have come. The programs concentrate on American art song written since the turn of the last century and often premiere new works or commission the writing of new works. This format is valuable and exciting because a great deal of this music is almost never heard, even though it is some of the best and most insightful written in our time about our time. This method of presentation, which organizes the music around a clear, easily apprehended theme and uses the spoken word to further reinforce the thematic structure helps listeners have a deeper, more emotionally satisfying experience of music which can sometimes be challenging to the ear.

"At Home in America" expresses very personal feelings about some of the fundamental characteristics of the American ideal. Composers Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, Nils Vigeland and others realize texts by Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and James Agee in an exploration of individual experiences in a younger, hopeful America. Poetry and related spoken texts tie these wonderful works together and create for the listener an immediate emotional experience.

 

 

"American Gothic" invites the audience to join the performers in a kind of morbid musicale, beginning with the poetry of and musical settings of the great American proto-Goth, Edgar Allan Poe. This dark, funny and sometimes harrowing program of music by George Crumb, John Duke, Ned Rorem and others includes texts, sung and spoken, written by Poe, Sara Teasdale, Conrad Aiken, Elizabeth Bishop and many others.

 

 

"Awake to Creation" celebrates our special human interactions with the natural world and with each other. Exquisitely beautiful songs by John Cage, Henry Cowell, Miriam Gideon and Ezra Laderman are punctuated with texts of humor and wit by James Joyce, Gertrude Norman and Archibald MacLeish. These wonderful works describe and illuminate aspects of how we act in the world and how the world acts in us.

 

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