Dark Testament
for soprano, trumpet, horn, cello, piano and recorded sound (2018; 35 min.)
Dark Testament gives powerful musical voice to poems by Amit Majmudar that confront the damage human beings do to each other and the world. By turns dreamlike, satirical, lamenting and horror-stricken, the work provides surprisingly entertaining indictments of technological dehumanization, environmental destruction, child abuse, and the American obsession with firearms, along with a cinematic central movement that careens through Russian history from the Czarist era to Putin’s fossil-fueled kleptocracy, with the “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin surviving countless assassination attempts. Dark Testament is scored for soprano, trumpet, horn, cello, and piano, and is approximately 35 minutes in duration. The drama of the work is heightened through recorded soundtracks, digital sound effects, and numerous lighting changes, lending itself well to semi-staged performances.
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