World Premiere Song Cycles in House Concert

Musica Marin presents a house concert tomorrow in Belvedere, with several works by composer-in-residence Clint Borzoni, along with music of Schubert, Brahms, and Rossini. Singing the new works (which include two song cycles, two longer songs, and an arrangement of an aria from Borzoni’s opera When Adonis Calls) will be two alums of the Merola Opera Program, Mark Diamond and Laura Krumm. Ruth Ellen Kahn, violist and Artistic Director, gives a preview.

There’s more information about the performance at the Musica Marin website.

Clint Borzoni’s first collaboration with Musica Marin and the Merola Opera Program took place last year, when he wrote a work for baritone and string quartet that could be paired on a program with Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach. This time around, he’s written works for baritone and mezzo-soprano, each accompanied by the member of the string family that corresponds to their range, cello and viola. “I was figuring out what can I write for this concert, and I have a few poets, friends of mine, who have poetry that I’ve been dying to set for a long time,” Borzoni says. “John Grimmett and Judith Wolf, they have little tiny poems, like one-liners that I fell in love with, and I fell in love with a lot of them. And I tried to create a song cycle based on these one-liners or two-liners. And the other two poets, Geoffrey Dillard and Sally Gall have really epic longer poems. So those became just one song each, while the other two poets have maybe five or six songs.” The other performers on Saturday’s concert are Kahn, cellist Jennifer Culp, and pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg.