The Mary Oliver Songs Bk 1: The Return (2012)
IN THE COMPOSER’S OWN WORDS
“Poetry, and Mary Oliver’s poetry in particular, has always meant a lot to me, so when I was thinking about composing a new large-scale work for my Wonder Suit to show off the latest prototype, I turned to her work. I love to choose pages at random and read from her selected works and it was during one of my random selections that caught my attention. It’s a poem called The Return and it tells a kind of Orpheus story. Reading this poem inside my head I began to get ideas and this was the first piece that I used a new technique of recording myself reading the poem and then processing that recording, extracting pitch and rhythm from it. My original intention was to use the poem in the piece, but I couldn’t get permission for that and so this was my solution.
“The piece is in 6 sections that each tell a part of the story. There is a chorale that recurs at various intervals that represents the ‘white thread‘ that Oliver invokes to return. I think of this poem as representing a deep dive into ones’ own psyche and safely returning. For me, it is about a relationship with myself.”
–Eleonor Sandresky, 2012
Details
The Mary Oliver Songs Bk 1: The Return
(2012) 25 min
for choreographed pianist and Wonder Suit
Music by Eleonor Sandresky
World Premiere: January 7, 2012 | Eleonor Sandresky, piano and Wonder Suit | IBeam, Brooklyn, NY.
Publishing & Licensing Information
To perform The Mary Oliver Songs Bk 1, please contact varsa@sandresky.com.
ASCAP | all rights reserved.
