Cette série a été conçue pour compléter les traditionnelles instructions vocales et fonctionne parfaitement en tant que littérature préparatoire pour le premier livre de Solos et le premier livre de Solos Partie II. Chaque pièce est en anglais et a une portée limitée vocale ainsi que d'un accompagnement au piano qui est jouable par un pianiste étudiant. Les pièces incluent des mélodies, de chansons folkloriques, les chansons humoristiques et chansons populaires adaptées époque et sont toutes les mesures appropriées pour les solos du concours. Le CD d'accompagnement comprend des accompagnements professionnellement enregistrées. Table des matières Soprano: Alice Blue Gown · April Showers · Butterflies (Schulz) · Cradle Song (Brahms) · Evening Prayer from Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck) · The False Prophet (Scott) · Florian's Song (Godard) · Golden Slumbers (English folksong) · It Was a Lover and His Lass (Austin) · Ladybird (Schumann) · The Lilac Tree (Gartlin) · The Little Sandman (arr. Brahms) · My Little Heart (Weckerlin) · The Nightingale (Alabieff) · Oh! Dear, What Can the Matter Be? (16th Century) · Oh, Pretty Birds (Rigel) · The Rosebush (Himmel) · The Sweetest Flower that Blows (Hawley) · Two Marionettes (Cooke) · The Willow Song (16th Century) · The Willow Tree (arr. Reimann) · The Winter It Is Past (arr. Hopekirk). / Soprano Et Piano

The Long Journey, the final monologue of the opera The Golden Dragon based on the eponymous play by Roland Schimmelpfennig, has been given the air of a ballad. A young Chinese works illegally in an Asian restaurant of Anytown. Not having a health insurance, he bleeds to death after a botched dental operation. His colleagues throw his body into the river which runs through the town and carries the body to the sea. He floats back to his home country - this last journey is the theme of the monologue. / Soprano Et Piano

for soprano and piano. Par CASKEN JOHN. Chansons de Verlaine were completed in 2006. The third song, Colloque sentimental, was written in 2003 for Alison Smart and Katharine Durran’s New French Song project. It was as a result of having written one short song to words by Verlaine that I subsequently decided to set two further poems to make a group of three. All three were also set by Debussy: L’ombre des arbres and Chevaux de bois appear in Ariettes Oubliées, while Colloque sentimental belongs to Debussy’s second set of Fêtes Galantes. The poems I have grouped together are linked by the idea of three different landscapes. In the first, Verlaine precedes the words of his own sad, pale landscape with words from Cyrano de Bergerac about a nightingale who fears himself about to fall into a river and drown. In the second poem the landscape has been occupied by a fairground where men, women and children watch as the hobby-horses go round and round before night falls and the church tolls a passing-bell. The third poem takes us into an old park where two ghosts recall their past. The one wonders if the other remembers the happy days of their past lives, but the other doesn’t want to remember, barely acknowledging the closeness they once shared, seeing only that ‘hope has fled, defeated, towards the dark sky.’ I am very grateful to Roger Nichols and Dominique Mols for their advice with the setting of the French texts and with the translations. John Casken Colloque sentimental was first performed by Alison Smart and Katherine Durran at the Purcell Room in London on 13 July 2004/ Répertoire / Soprano et Piano