— Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

The title work, commissioned by Jacob Ashworth for violin and piano, is a 30-minute dramatic cycle based on the multi-faceted Greek god Hermes. Solo Sonata for violin-viola-violin was my first commission immediately following 9/11/2001; structured as a “feast-famine-feast” cycle, it features virtuosic outer movements for solo violin with a deeply felt Lament between them. A Garden’s Time Piece is a brief cycle for violin and soprano setting poems of Leslie Laskey.

Available wherever you buy or download music.  MSR Classics  |  Amazon

Program Notes  Hermestanze  |  Solo Sonata  |  A Garden’s Time Piece

Sample the Album

Video from 2007

More details are available here: The News from Poems – ensemble chamber opera 2015, 110′

The concert reading in April at the National Opera Center was tremendous.  Please see below for the fantastic participants and enjoy this four-minute video from the reading. Thanks hugely to all for their artistry and passion!

The News from Poems is my only opera undertaken without a commission.  I have written it, libretto and music, over the past ten years around other work and the April reading has shown that it is whole and ripe and ready for the finish work that goes on in production.

• Currently scored for a quartet of instruments, orchestrations for chamber ensembles of 7 or 13, as well as for chamber orchestra are possible as well.

• The intense use of the chorus in Brechtian ensemble style, with all chorus members performing multiple solo cameo roles, makes the opera a good fit for vocal arts departments that wish to give their advanced students experience in both contemporary music and featured dramatic characters to develop.   In this respect, a collaboration between an opera company and a conservatory might be one logical path towards a premier.

• The opera requires very little in the way of a set as it was conceived to use primarily  lighting, costume pieces and props deployed by ensemble members to instantaneously  convey different spaces and times.

• Perusal score available in pdf or hard copy.

• More audio excerpts at http://susankander.net/works/the-news-from-poems-2/

Rehearsals are under way for the semi-staged reading at the American Opera Center April 10.  The cast is extraordinary:  Keith Phares, baritone, as William Carlos Williams; Katherine Pracht, mezzo, as his wife Floss; John Taylor Ward, bass-baritone, as Ezra Pound.  A stellar ensemble of 8 singers and 4 musicians, fielded by ASCAP/CMA 2016 award winning ensemble Cantata Profana, led by artistic director Jacob Ashworth.  Louisa Proske, fresh from yet another hit, Heartbeat Opera’s Lucia, is directing.  Williams, Flossie and I are in fantastic hands!

She Never Lost a Passenger

I am tremendously excited that Lyric Opera of Kansas City is going to premier the new orchestration of my first commissioned opera.  This story of Harriet Tubman has been produced around the country continuously over the past 22 years.  The production will be the centerpiece of the Lyric’s renowned Opera Camp with soprano Roberta Gumbel and tenor Nathan Grannar reprising their roles from the original production as Harriet Tubman and Philadelphia abolitionist/historian William Grant Still.

I’m also pleased to report that Opera Kansas did a second round of performances this year of Passenger, touching a few thousand more children and teachers with her story in music.  Again, hats off Paul Brodene Smith in Wichita!

Postcards from America

It’s always nice to hear from people who are performing pieces of mine.  Ben Serna-Grey will be performing the oboe and piano work on his master’s recital at University of British Columbia on April 24.