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Annual American Composers Update
Lori Laitman
Lori Laitman invites all readers to visit her new website,
www.artsongs.com.
Premieres
With the composer at the piano, mezzo-soprano Katherine
Honan-Carter introduced the song cycle Round and
Round (text by Anne Spencer Lindbergh), at the Sumner
School Museum, Washington, DC, February 8, 2002. Laitman's
song cycle The Years (text by Sara Teasdale)
premiered at Strathmore Hallin Bethesda, MD, October
27, 2001, with Susan Wheeler, soprano, and the composer
at the piano. A program produced May 20, 2001, at Strathmore
Hall included the first performances of The Ballad
Singer (text by Thomas Hardy), with Randall Scarlata,
baritone, and Frederick Weldy, piano; Men With Small
Heads (poems by Thomas Lux), with Scarlata, baritone,
and Laitman, piano; and I am in Need of Music,
with soprano Lauren Wagner, baritone Scarlata, and pianist
Weldy. Commissioned through a Special Projects Grant
from the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
at Georgia Southern University, in Statesboro, a song
cycle for soprano voice and alto saxophone, for Sandra
McClain and Carolyn Bryan, will be heard first March
5, 2002.
Performances
Daughters, for mezzo-soprano, violin, cello,
and piano, was heard October 30, 2000, at Alice Tully
Hall, and November 6, 2001, at the Juilliard School
of Music, both with Brenda Patterson, Minyoung Chang,
Ellie Moser, and Karen Savage; at the Charlottesville
(VA) Chamber Music Festival in the Jefferson Theatre,
with Patterson, Timothy Summers, Raman Ramakrishnan,
and Judith Gordon, September 16, 2001; and at the Dennis
and Phillip Ratner Museum in Bethesda, with Karyn Friedman,
Sasha Margolis, Janet Frank, and Carl Banner, December
11, 2001. In 2001, accompanied by pianist James Hiatt,
soprano Brenda Witmer performed selected songs at Whitticker
Center, in Harrisburg, PA, September 16; and at the
NVJCC, in Annandale, VA, April 26. Other 2001 programs
that featured Laitman's works for soprano and piano
occurred at Temple Emanuel, in Kensington, MD, with
Amanda Balestrieri and Steven Silverman, March 4; at
The Church of the Holy City, in Washington, DC, with
Harlie Sponaugle and Barbara Wilkinson, September 30;
and at Birmingham-Southern College, in Birmingham, AL,
with David Smith and Adam Bowles, October 7.
Publications
Holocaust 1944; song cycle for baritone voice
and bass viol; Men with Small Heads, Mystery,
and The Ballad Singer; all for baritone and piano;
Between the Bliss and Me, Four Dickinson Songs, Sunflowers,
Plums, and Armgart; all for soprano and piano;
Echo; soprano, mezzo-soprano or baritone, and
piano; Dreaming; soprano or soprano/baritone
and piano; all by Classical Vocal Reprints.
Further Information
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