English Art Songs

"American Death Ballads was composed especially for tenor Brian Thorsett and premiered by him at the San Francisco Conservatory, November 1, 2015, with pianist John Churchwell, and at the National

Collected Songs for Soprano and Piano includes music from the following four sets of songs: Five Love Songs; Suenos de Esperanza; Three Simple Songs; and five excerpts from

Flowers of the Soul was commissioned by Ms. Jane Wait to commemorate the renovation of the beautiful rose gardens at Yaddo, the artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. I have always found

While the title is French for "Eight Flower Songs," the texts are all in English. The poems' flowers metaphorically evoke fragrance, love and loss, life and death, rebirth and regrowth. This 20-minute song

Composed in 1984 and revised in 1993, Of All the Souls That Stand Create for baritone and piano is a setting of a poem by Emily Dickinson. The music features free tonality, a consistently

Hailstork has created a powerful eight-minute monodrama from a passage in Frederick Douglass' landmark autobiography, where the great orator asks why boats can roam the sea while he must remain in chains.