Phoenix Festival DIGITAL Playbill 2024 (2) - Flipbook - Page 20
AUTUMN SERENADES
A concert of original music composed by Ellen Mandel
Performers
JESSICA CRANDALL ……….....................................……………….. Singer
ELLEN MANDEL ………….........................……………… Pianist/Composer
Run time: 60 minutes without intermission
Composer’s Note
How I started writing songs to poems
I was creating a lot of music for theater and had wanted to write songs to poems
for some time, when one Thanksgiving, I had some free time ahead. I was
looking at a list I’d made of poets whose poems I wanted to set to music, with
e.e. cummings at the top, when I got a letter from a dear friend, a tenor and poet,
asking me to set four poems by e.e. cummings for a recital he was planning.
The perfect moment! I set right to work and composed my 昀椀rst four cummings songs—-including “a wind has blown the rain away,” the title song of my
cummings CD. I was launched!
If a play I’m creating music for has lyrics indicating a song—-I set them to
music. Sometimes I feel that the song can stand on its own, outside the play—and deserves more time and development than the play can accommodate—-so I
compose more music—-keeping the essence of the song and helping it blossom—-and add a piano accompaniment—and voilà—-another song that has its
own independent life!
My goal is always to express in music what I feel from the poem or lyric.
Sometimes I step out and write both music and lyrics.
This concert will include some songs to poems, some songs from plays, and
some songs with both lyrics and music by me. I’m incredibly lucky to have the
exquisite talents of Jessica Crandall to sing the songs in this program.
—Ellen Mandel