SKU: WD.080689471179

UPC: 080689471179.

Place s! Lights! Curtain Up! It’s time for The Star Factor and you have a front-row seat! The setting is Camp Heart & Soul, a summer arts camp that features a talent showcase with an exciting twist: the showcase winner earns the opportunity to compete on a national TV show. As everyone excitedly prepares for the performance, their initial group cooperation begins to crumble as their celebrity coach tells them that “looking out for yourself is the only way to become a star!” A series of zany complications climax at the broadcast of the show when all the would-be “stars” finally learn that being part of the Body of Christ is what is important, and every person has a special and unique role to play. The Star Factor is another home-run musical from the gifted pen of Christy Semsen, combining humorous characters, clever storytelling, and memorable songs that deliver a solid contemporary spiritual theme the whole audience will appreciate. Daniel Semsen has produced state-of-the-art accompaniment tracks – worthy of any television show – and a comprehensive Teacher's Resource Kit and performance Instructional DVD will provide all the production help and ideas you need for an impactful and unforgettable experience. So set your DVR for The Star Factor – it’s an experience you’ll want to become a part of again and again!

SKU: SU.80111701

Prometheus was composed in the spring of 1975 during my stay in Munich. The work was conceived as a complete scene for my opera, also called Prometheus, in which the percussionists are on stage as the main actors. With the help of dancers, projections, and a dazzling array of lighting effects, the opera re-enacts the story of Prometheus. Earlier and later in the opera there are singing soloists and a chorus, and an orchestra of many brass and wind instruments added to the percussion. Strings are used only for a few lyrical sections. The percussion group is made up of six players, five of whom are surrounded by a large phalanx of drums, cymbals, gongs, bells, wood, skin, metal and mallet instruments. The slide whistle is even used to suggest the wind on the high mountain that Prometheus is chained to. The sixth player is represented by the four timpani, and is somewhat set apart from the others because he is the musical image of the hero--Prometheus. The timpani cadence is the high point of the scene, with the lighting throwing everything on the stage into a silhouette, except for the face and hands of the timpanist. The work is built around the concept of a God choosing to bring fire and energy to mankind; he imparts the gift of work and the freedom for man to choose his own destiny. The five big bass drums explode in stretto-like passages suggesting the anger of the Gods. Ultimately Prometheus is punished, but man once tasting freedom, becomes the winner. Prometheus was composed under a Guggenheim Fellowship and was first performed by Paul Price's Manhattan School Percussion Ensemble in 1976.Percussion Ensemble (6 players) Duration: 13’30 Composed: 1975 Published by: Soundspells Productions.

SKU: PR.114410840

UPC: 680160015689.

See the biography of Michael Karmon on the back cover.
WHEN THE SHEEP WON'T COME:  A SLEEPLESS NOCTURNE FOR GUITAR was composed for Joseph Hagedorn, winner of the 1990 GFA solo competition, and premiered by him in November 1999.  My original idea was to write a serene and moody nocturne in several movements.  However, as I began researching and listening to new guitar pieces, I came across Toru Takemitsu's All in Twilight, and it immediately made a profound impression.  At the time I found it beautiful, moving, and inspiring, but I also felt I didn't have anything to add to what Takemitsu already did, and that I needed to find a new concept for my piece.  So, I decided to view night as a potentially restless time, rather than a serene time, and portray states of mind one might go through during a sleepless night.  The names of the movements evoke, at least in my mind, the moods I am to depict, and the piece becomes progressively more convoluted as it goes on.  By the end, the music is a surreal and weary shadow of the opening.

SKU: PR.111402850

ISBN 9781491132005. UPC: 680160680627. What the Living Do by Maria Howe.

The poetry of Marie Howe has a special place in Ricky Ian Gordon’s heart and mind, both haunting and soothing. WITHOUT MUSIC is a five-movement work in which Howe’s words and Gordon’s music together give voice to longterm grieving for a loved one lost to AIDS. The work was commissioned by Music Academy of the West for their 2019 Marilyn Horne Song Competition Winners’ Recital Tour.
For a long time, I have been in dialogue with the poems of Marie Howe. Some poets speak so directly to you that they become a second voice inside you. I have so many of her poems memorized, and I speak them so often because at certain moments I know she will say it better than me.Many I have set or tried to set and felt dissatisfied and put them away. Marie’s poems are so plain spoken, you want them to feel, if you are taking the trouble to set them to music, that the songs are plain spoken as well... because it would be criminal to set Marie’s poems in a way that obscures the words and makes them feel distant or remote.I first heard Kelsey Lauritano in a Master Class that Stephanie Blythe was giving at Juilliard. I was bowled over by her poise, the beauty of her voice, her engagement with her body and her connection to text. She is a real artist through and through. I wanted to create a cycle for her where it felt like she was talking to the audience in the most intimate way possible. I wanted to be able to see her heart.These five poems are from Marie’s book, “What the Living Do,” the book which was published eight years after her brother Johnny died at 28 from AIDS. The book is impossibly beautiful, as clear as a spring in a remote forest... the poems simply tell the story of Johnny’s illness and Marie’s relationship with it, and him... as Marie would put it, they are “how some of it happened.”I lost my partner Jeffrey Grossi to AIDS in 1996, so needless to say, this book, and Marie’s poems were balm for me... one of the myriad ways I got through an excruciating time, as Jeffrey’s death followed practically, the death of my entire community. I feel bad, and even awkward, that this is still so much a part of my story, but it is. Is it PTSD, or just, not wanting to forget? I don’t know. But these songs are steeped in that time.