A SONG ALBUM presents several of American composer Stanley Grill’s song cycles for soprano and string orchestra. Dating back into pre-history, poets and musicians have always been the ones to lift humanity up from the mundane and connect us with the deepest part of ourselves. The poems set to music in this album reflect and comment upon themes which are both personal and social, concerns impacting all of us, both individually and collectively.

1918. Living through the COVID-19 pandemic, my thoughts often turned to 1918. A century later and people remain the same – and learned so little from the past. As the death toll soared, I searched for poetry for such times and came across a poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt that grabbed my attention with its first line: “thought at first grief had brought him down.” Moved by the poem, I soon learned that this was but one poem of many from a volume of poems, published back in 1995 by W.W. Norton, portraying life during those years when so many died, in a mirror image of what was happening all around the world in our century – yet which seemed strangely lost to our collective memory. All poems by permission of the poet.

A SINGLE THORN is an addition to my Music for the Earth series. Composed as the war in Ukraine continued to rage through a second long month, my thoughts kept returning to the fact that although the world may have turned its attention to the war, impending environmental catastrophe forgotten, climate change was not simply going to come to a halt, waiting for humanity to remember that we needed to act if we are to mitigate the disaster that looms ahead.

The Canadian poet Meg Freer had sent me a number of poems about a year previously, which I had saved waiting for their time to come. With these thoughts in mind, the time seemed right at last. Re-reading them a year later, they echoed my thoughts, beautifully expressing the inseverable connection between our inner world of thoughts and feelings and the world without, the natural world – a world with which we are inextricably linked. A connection which we sever at our own peril. All poems by permission of the poet.

STONE & STAR. Two poems by two very different poets sharing a common theme of the human condition. Hart Crane’s MEDITATION and Rilke’s ABEND. We live between heaven and earth, striving towards both, without belonging to either.

CANZONI D’AMORE. So, here’s a confession. If anyone asked me to name my favorite singer, I wouldn’t hesitate. I simply revel in the sound of Cecilia Bartoli’s voice – and long harbored a fantasy that one day she might sing one of my songs. Of course, it would help if I actually wrote something for her first, but I guess that’s not how fantasies generally work. But after listening to her singing one of the songs from Arie Antiche, I decided, why the heck not. Write something. Sitting in the poetry section of my little attic library, mostly ignored for many years, was a small volume of Italian love songs, many by the Italian Renaissance masters of the “sweet new style” of poetry that seemed just right for the task.

THE ARTISTS

Stanley Grill is a classical composer whose passion for medieval and Renaissance music has greatly influenced his writing. Two main themes permeate many of his works: music composed in an attempt to translate something about the nature of the physical world and our human relationship to it and music composed to inspire and promote world peace.

Marek Štilec is one of the most prominent representatives of the young generation of Czech conductors. Collaborating with a wide range of international orchestras, he is a highly sought after label conductor. His current projects include recording the complete orchestra works of Zdenĕk Fibich, the symphonic works of Franz Ignaz Beck (a representative of the Manheim School) and a large-scale project featuring the works of Czech composers active in Vienna in the 18th century. This is his fourth recording collaboration with Stanley Grill.

Lisa Rombach brings her years of experience working in the relational embodiment field and extensive training in the Feldenkrais Method to her classical singing. Her gifts as a vocal storyteller allow her to bring contemporary opera and vocal work to life, sharing her passion for the magic of sound and gesture. This is her fourth recording collaboration with Stanley Grill.

The Chamber Orchestra Mannheim (KKO) has focuses on the rediscovery and care of the Mannheim School of Music and thus has become the traditional and direct successor of the famous Mannheimer Hofkapelle (Mannheim Court Orchestra) of the times of Elector Palatinate Carl Theodor (1724–1799).