In the Nautilus Composer-Librettist Studio, I got to collaborate with some stellar composers and make work I was really proud of, including a very pretentious opera duet about the tragedy of a broken iPhone with art song composer and great dude Dan Nass. After the studio, we sat down in a coffee shop with my toddler crawling on me, and he proposed we work together on a new commission he’d gotten from a flute, harp, and voice trio. “I want to do something really different,” he said. “Like something with a character, or a story.”
I think I literally laughed in his face. Yeah, usually playwrights can do something with a character, or a story. Art song folks, you know?
At some point, we landed on the notion of sleep paralysis, and produced a piece from the point of view of a nightmare. It’s called …And the Sound is Thunder and will be making its world premiere with the Seen/Heard Trio in late April.
Here’s a sneak preview of the text:
You gasp for shallow breath, to drown in air
Your heart clenches itself together
It throbs, it pounds, it beats
Like hooves
Like thunder
Rolling on the stones of your lungs
And you do nothing
Your arms are lead
Your body useless
Useless
Darkness SilenceThere’s someone here
It’s gonna be creepy, y’all. We paid a lot of attention to breath and using gasps and shallow breathing as part of the text. I’m very excited to hear it brought to life by some extremely talented musicians, and very proud to continue my work as a librettist and nightmare maker.