Deborah Henson-Conant’s
3 Folk Songs for Chamber Ensemble & Soprano
Decades ago I started writing chamber music for soprano Gloria Hodes, to create a chamber music show she could tour with. Gloria is a dramatic soprano with a long list of credits including singing at the Met, touring with companies of Showboat and Les Mis, and as “Bertie” – a role she helped develop in the Off-Broadway show “The Club” about a turn-of-the-20th-Century Men’s Club – in which all the roles were played by women.
My goal was to write her new music that she could perform in her own show, that would showcase not just her singing, but her acting and musical storytelling skills. The 3 Folk Songs were the “lighter portion” of the first show I wrote for Gloria, which also included two much darker works: “Persephone Lost” and “Songs of the Pyre”, which have since been nearly completed and became the feature of a Boston University “Women’s History Month” in 2014, called “Mythic Women.”
Soprano – Harp – Cello
(Advanced Pedal Harp)
3 Folk Songs for Chamber Ensemble & Soprano
Decades ago I started writing chamber music for soprano Gloria Hodes, to create a chamber music show she could tour with. Gloria is a dramatic soprano with a long list of credits including singing at the Met, touring with companies of Showboat and Les Mis, and as “Bertie” – a role she helped develop in the Off-Broadway show “The Club” about a turn-of-the-20th-Century Men’s Club – in which all the roles were played by women.
My goal was to write her new music that she could perform in her own show, that would showcase not just her singing, but her acting and musical storytelling skills. The 3 Folk Songs were the “lighter portion” of the first show I wrote for Gloria, which also included two much darker works: “Persephone Lost” and “Songs of the Pyre”, which have since been nearly completed and became the feature of a Boston University “Women’s History Month” in 2014, called “Mythic Women.”
Gloria was – and still is – a life-long inspiration and role model. She’s also my aunt.
The 3 Folk Songs for soprano, harp & cello are based on 3 folk songs with women heroes, all songs I grew up hearing and loving – but I wanted to get deeper into the psychology of the songs and the characters portrayed in them. WHY did they do what they did? How did they feel about it?
Shortly after completing these works, my life took me on a wild trajectory into the world of Jazz Harp, which included TV appearances, a record contract and European Tours. And so these pieces, like so many others, remained incomplete — the cello and soprano parts meticulously written, and the harp part still partly in sketch form.
Completing this work for publication is one of the goals of The DHC Legacy Project
I admit that one of my goals in writing music at that time was simply to be able to spend more time with the people I loved, so while I always intended to publish this work, I originally wrote it to play with Gloria Hodes and Celeste Cumming for the pure joy of creating music together. The recording above is from the original performance
With Gloria Hodes at the piano
With Celeste Cumming
To Perform this Piece or Support its Publication
Learn more about “The DHC Legacy Project”, committed to completing and publishing all my works for others to perform.
