Victor insists that it is no dream, that a voice had awakened him in the night and led him to his studio to work on a painting of a bridge over water that had somehow drawn him into it - actually inside of it - and that he had been swept underwater to some kind of hell.  Elena tries to reason with Victor, telling him that this is pure nonsense, that he needs to leave his lonely studio and morbid obsession with death. Victor refuses. Elena encourages Victor to go back to work then, to paint this demon out of his soul and turn his terror into triumph.  Alone and terrified, Victor receives a visit from the Mortician who encourages Victor to eat paint for inspiration, as did the artist Van Gogh.

Victor’s body lies on a slab in the mortuary. The Mortician and her assistants sing of their preparations to embalm him. As they begin, Victor wakes up screaming. Elena is summoned to reassure Victor that he’s been taken to an emergency room, not to a mortuary, that he has poisoned himself by eating his paints. The woman he takes for a mortician is a doctor; the others are nurses. Elena is worried for Victor, worried that his obsession with death is going to actually kill him. The Doctor agrees, warning Victor that a mind turned against itself in this way is capable of creating the very events it fears most. Elena begs Victor to allow the Doctor to administer a sedative that will promote rest and recovery. Victor refuses, recognizing the Doctor as the spirit death itself. Thinking him insane, Elena reluctantly signs a commitment order. The Doctor administers a sedative. She and Elena sing Victor to sleep.

A drugged Victor is led to his coffin in the cemetery where Elena and the mourners are gathered. Victor sings of his acceptance of death as he climbs into the coffin. The Mortician closes the coffin. Elena interrupts the Priest’s eulogy to say that she’s heard something. The Mortician tells her it’s only the wind. The coffin is lowered into the grave and Elena and the others exit. The Gravedigger returns to his song of death as he shovels dirt into the grave. Muffled thumps and screams of terror issue from Victor’s coffin. He is still alive. The Gravedigger smiles and continues shoveling as the cries weaken, then cease altogether.

The next day, Maren and Satan travel to be with the girls for their celebration.  It is during this time, filled with music, and dancing, and adoration for their idol, that one of the girls, 13 year-old Bodil, places a wayward kiss on Satan’s lips, an action that sends Maren into youthful madness, believing that he was hers to love.  Running away from the proceedings, Maren is finally caught by Bodil who apologizes for any trespasses that she might have made against her friend.  Maren seemingly accepts her apology. The girls are suddenly captured by a group of clergy who restrain them.

ACT II

The girls are held in the trollkvinnefengeselhulle, or “witches-hole”, while Maren is being interrogated.  A priest, who is testing the girls through ‘ordeals by water’, as well as through the forcing of recitations of the catechism, does not have enough evidence to convict Maren.  Sure that the mark of Cain appears somewhere on her body, he begins to shear the head of her curls.  When no mark results, he hits her with the back of his hand and exits the room in haste. The girls sing, scared in their metal prison.  Ingeborg, the youngest girl at 8 years of age, questions the older girls if they think that they too will be burned alive like other witches who came before.  Gunnhild, the pessimist of the bunch, and also the most resigned to her fate, tells the youngest that there is no hope for the wicked in the community, and that she ought to hope for a speedy engulfment in the stoked flames. Meanwhile, Maren sits with her head bowed, waiting to hear of her fate.  When the priest returns, he sits behind her and tells her of her mother’s final hours.  All the while he heats a large branding device. As the priest readies to brand a mark on the back of Maren’s head she confesses to visiting hell, but charges Bodil and the other girls with being intoxicated by him.  She was but the vessel of their temptation.  She claims Bodil to be Satan’s chosen bride. The four other girls are burned at the stake as the act concludes.

ACT III

Maren works, turning around to reveal herself as a frail sixty year-old woman, still forced to do menial woodworking. One day she cries out Satan’s name, and a stairway in the floor opens up, which she explores with a candle.  She crawls down the steps that are carved into stone, and soon she is in a familiar place: the hell of her girlhood. When there, she is greeted by the girls she betrayed:  Bodil, Ingeborg, Karin, and Gunnhild, who exit from the ocean of fire wearing white bridal gowns.  They are beautiful, the same likeness of their young selves.  Bodil hugs Maren and says that she forgives her. Satan enters, the hair on his withers grown long. Maren exclaims that she’s waited her entire life to return.  She too wants to commit herself to the ocean of fire.  Satan doesn’t recognize her; even though she attempts to jog his memory with the recounting of their night spent snuggled together on that very floor. He expels her from hell, forcing her back to her life in Vardø.  When she is almost gone, he cannot control his sadness and calls back to her, telling Maren that she will be the eternal martyr.  She will suffer forever knowing that her act of betrayal has led to Satan choosing her persecuted friends as the loves of his life.  He questions whether she is doomed to an eternity in limbo, or maybe worse: heaven. 

SYNOPSIS

Setting: The entire opera is set in Prague sometime in 1924 within the confines of a town square. Within a large cage, the two hunger artists Alfons and Ivona starve themselves and occasionally perform “hunger routines.” Hunger is their art and the townspeople their audience. Beside the hunger artists sit three butchers: Bronislav, Jan and Milos. Their job is to ensure that the hunger artists do not eat. They sit there all night, bored, eating giant slabs of cooked meat off of large barbecue forks. 

Scene I: In the town square at midnight

The butchers sit and watch the hunger artists, all the while commenting upon their circumstances as well as the circumstances of the hunger artists. Alfons comes into view in his cage. He begins to search through a pile of things. Alfons interrupts his search with a caterwaul of hunger pain. The butchers engage Alfons with taunts as he resumes his searching. Alfons cries out once more. The butchers ask him “What is in the bag?” Alfons finds a soiled bag. Ivona, also in the cage with Alfons, wakes up and comes into view. Alfons ruminates upon the circumstances of his art as well as his relationship to Ivona. Alfons picks up the burlap sack he spotted before. Ivona, snatches it from Alfons and hides it behind her back. This sparks a quarrel between them regarding trust. Ivona tries to change the subject by propositioning Alfons. Alfons declines due to fatigue and lack of stamina. Ivona suggests that they perform a hunger routine to build up his energy. This excites the butchers. Alfons and Ivona perform a well rehearsed number (a performance within a performance). The number is cut short with a true wail of hunger—Alfons hunches over and has to lie down. The butchers express dissatisfaction. Ivona puts Alfons to bed. She retrieves the burlap sack and pulls out an apple. She expresses her desire to eat the apple, considers her relationship to Alfons, and then returns the apple to the sack without coming to a decision.

Scene II: Ivona leaves the cage 

Alfons, Jan and Milos are now asleep. Ivona leaves the cage, holding the burlap sack. Bronislav shines a flashlight on her. Ivona tries to give her apple to Bronislav for fear of giving in to her hunger. Bronislav refuses to help her, derides her and finally convinces her to “take a nibble.” Ivona takes a bite of the apple and is overwhelmed with satisfaction. Bronislav forces her back into her cage. 

Scene III: Ivona re-enters the cage 

Ivona re-enters the cage, inadvertently waking Alfons. Alfons takes the bag and pulls out the bitten apple. He chastises her for betraying him and breaking the fast. Ivona argues that they can go on sneaking food without anyone being the wiser. Alfons is too ethical for this and does not accept this proposition. The butchers chime in with their comments while Alfons and Ivona lament this unfortunate turn of events. Alfons, totally disgusted, screams at Ivona, “Eat Ivona, eat!” and throws her out of the cage. 

The Hula Mano
for soprano, clarinet (Bb or A) and piano (2017) 4'40"

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I interpreted this traditional text as a romantic love song, possibly about love making.  The shark (mano) is an obvious symbol of love or romantic ecstasy.  There is a dialogue between the singer and the clarinet--something like a courtship.  The piano represents the emotion and the ebb and flow of the ocean in this love-making episode.  The trio was premiered at the University of Hawaii at Hilo in March of 2017, by Rachel Schutz (soprano), Jonathan Korth (piano) and James Moffit (clarinet).

Islands of Death
for mezzo-soprano and violin (2016) 23' 

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Islands of Death was written for my dear friends Duo Cortona (Rachel Calloway and Ari Streisfeld). They premiered the song cycle in Cortona, Italy in the summer of 2016 at the Cortona Sessions for New Music. This set of songs is a further exploration of my fascination with themes of death and the unique, closed-off worlds that are islands. Each musical island has its own feeling, its own sound and its own style. Each island has its own language. In this set, I took islands which had some kind of death incident, death story or potential for death. 

The first two songs in Spanish and Portuguese, form a two-song set which treats death as a curious event, something scary and mysterious, based on real life events and places. In the first song, a man lived on a small river island in Mexico, hanging dolls (that he found in the river) from trees as an homage to a girl that had drowned in the same river (or so he said). The second song deals with death by venom, on an island covered by snakes—scary, but not unethical, simply a natural phenomenon one should avoid.

The second two-song set takes death into the social realm: disease outbreaks and defensive warfare. While these are difficult situations which have a potential for massive body count, they are inevitable and not considered unethical deaths. In fact, the heroism of death in the face of disease and the protection of your home are very useful constructs for those that must deal with grief. Both songs are very different in style, but serve to act as a musical contrast—rhythmic and fast, these songs portray the excitement and anxiety of death. 

The final two-song set takes a somewhat different approach, dealing with mass death as the result of evil and systematic cruelty. The subject matter: mass extermination, cannibalism and starvation is almost too extreme to portray with music. I decided to let the text and the listener's imagination paint an image in contrast to the banal music in Nazino Island. I kept thinking of the phrase by Hannah Ahrendt: "The banality of evil." In these cases of mass extermination, the human is treated in a cold way, much like cattle or pigs. I think this is the only way that people can be so cruel—they become detached and lose their empathy for other humans through conceptual tricks of the mind: reclassification of certain people as "animals," the compartmentalization of duties and roles, the adherence to the leader, and the desire for social conformity.  

The same aspect of dehumanization is explored in last song, Shark Island. At the turn of the century German empire attempted to destroy two tribes of Africans, the Herero and the Nama of what is now called Namibia. With orders from commander von Trotha to annhiliate the tribes, German solders rounded them up into concentration camps on Shark Island where they were debased, starved and worked to death. Thinking about this atrocity, I wondered for several weeks, how to approach this matter. I collected several found texts from the events, from Germans, Africans, observers and reporters. I asked--what could make the Germans act so cruel while at the same time, acting very humane to their own people? And how did they turn what would normally be a typical act of genocide (warfare, murders, etc.) into a calculated and efficient enterprise. German corporations such as Deutsche Bank profited from this, German colonists gladly took part, and to this day there is strong sense of apartheid in Namibia, which has German settlers, to this day, celebrating their victory over the native population. Skulls were shipped from Namibia to labs in Germany to examine them for Eugenics studies. Postcards with emaciated prisoners were sent home with guards posing next to them. I think what is particularly appaling is the cold and scientific justification (along with the nationalistic and tribalistic bias of the Germans) for the absolutely cruel and unempathetic behavior, totally condoned by the settlers. To order all men, women and children to be killed, starved and robbed in their own native land because they are African, and then to justify this using pseudo-science and social control, is the height of arrogrance, and an embarrassment to a civilized society.    

All of the island texts are based on real events. I wrote lyrics for songs I, II and V. The middle set has texts from a letter by Mary Mallon aka Typhoid Mary—a diatribe she intended to send to a journalist, which she eventually sent to her lawyer. While she was only a carrier for typhoid, she was responsible for getting many other sick with the then fatal disease. Forced to live the rest of her life on a small island next to New York, she was given a death sentence for being infectious. Abbo Cernuus, a Parisian monk from the 9th Century, documented the Viking siege of Paris (which was only a small island fortress on the Seine) with great detail in poetic Latin. I took textual fragments from each source to piece together my own lyrics for the purpose of concision. I wrote the lyrics to Nazino Island, basing my lyrics on a story told by a survivor. The texts from Shark Island were all found texts: a German lullaby, texts from a Eugenics study, and an account from an English contractor in Nambia. 

E----
for bass cl., baritone, trumpet, trombone & electronic drones (2014) 10'

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Ever since my one-year stay in Hawaii, I have been very interested in islands as musical ideas. Islands have distinct characters, liquid boundaries, unusual evolutionary developments, an exotic appeal and in some cases, they can appear or disappear in a short time. Music is somewhat similar. Each piece is its own island, with its own culture and boundaries framing the experience like water. I have written a few island pieces so far, such as The Angry Birds of Kauai and He mele no Kane. Those pieces focus on Hawaiian experiences and folklore. E---- is entirely different. With lyrics by Royce Vavrek (my librettist on two occasions), E----takes the abstract notion of the island as an individual and creates a personal narrative from that point of departure. E----, the eponymous love interest is yearned for in the way that a distant homeland is imagined from a remote island. "I am an island in a lake in an island" sings the marooned baritone. He is stranded in a Dante-esque hell behind several moats. The island is both a haven and a trap. Floating in a musical sea of drones and floating harmonies, one can only search in the distance for someone who is long gone.

The melancholic attitude of the text reminded me of the tone of Morrissey, the rock singer known for singing sad and disgruntled ballads (i.e. "How soon is now?"). I didn't want to recreate Morrissey, but I think I came pretty close with the vocal writing and overall tone. E---- was written for loadbang in the summer of 2014.

The Age of Assassins
for tenor, horn and piano (2008) 18'

LISTEN to excerpts below (click on titles)
The Age of Assassins 
I. Chanson de la plus haute tour
II. Veillées
III. L'Éternité 
IV. Matineé d'Ivresse
V. Sensation-Mémoire

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Rosamounde
for treble voice and viola (2008) 6'

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Rosamounde - H. Davis; K. Swanson - live at The Lily Pad, Cambridge, Mass. (2008)
I. First Movement
II. Second Movement

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Zamrażane Słowa (Frozen Words) was written at the Tanglewood Music Center as part of a choral project. The text comes from anonymous polish fragments which I reassembled to create a theme of love in the face of the unknown. The texts are set so that they are stretched out over such a long period of time that the timbre of the words becomes musically significant. The music is expansive, having solos in each vocal section, divisi into three parts per section, and a bass part that reaches down to low C. Zamrażane Słowa was premiered at the Tanglewood Music Center in July of 2002 by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (chamber singers) with Michael Djupstrom conducting.