Musical Collaboration Premieres Friday

 

Saratoga Springs, NY (August 18, 2010) – Song Overheard, a chamber oratorio with music by Robinson McClellan and text by Joan Murray, will receive its world premiere with the Los Angeles-based Moira Smiley & VOCO Friday in Chatham.

The Hudson Opera House commissioned Song Overheard. It is based on "Song Overheard in a Field", Murray's lyrical elegy about American rural family life and the cycle of passing generations, which is inspired in part by the Hudson Valley landscape of abandoned barns, old churches, and burying rounds. The poet lives in Old Chatham.

McClellan is a composer, scholar, teacher, and concert presenter whose choral and instrumental music is performed regularly in the US and Europe and has been heard in concert and liturgical settings.

Murray is a poet, writer, and playwright whose books include Looking for the Parade, Dancing on the Edge, Queen of the Mist, and The Same Water. She also is the editor of The Pushcart Book of Poetry and the Poems to Live By anthologies and a repeat guest on NPR's Morning Edition.

Friday's performance is at 7:30 p.m. St. James Church, located at 129 Hudson Avenue in Chatham. Admission is $15. For information, call 518.822.1438.