'For Del Tredici, Victorian sensibility has yielded to urban contemporary realities - tormented relationships, personal transformations, and the joys and sorrows of gay life. Gay Life, in fact, happens to be the title of his song cycle premiered in May 2001 by the San Francisco Symphony, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and baritone William Sharp. (In its December 2001 issue, Out Magazine cited Gay Life in naming the composer one of its people of the year.) Performance artist John Kelly created an hour-long theatrical piece around eight of Del Tredici's songs. The latter work, Brother, was commissioned by both the NEA and the Rockefeller Foundation and also premiered in May 2001, in New York City. Del Tredici's most recent CD, released by Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI), is a song collection entitled "Secret Music," which New Yorker critic Alex Ross, Fanfare's Robert Carl and critic-at-large Jason Serinus all hailed as one of the best new-music albums of the year 2001. Commenting on Del Tredici's new vocal outpouring, San Francisco critic Marilyn Tucker was moved to write that it "must surely herald a bright new era for the neglected tradition of song composition."'
- samples -
Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter, for soprano & piano (1998/2001)
1 I. Children 3:23
2 II. A Giant Wave 2:46
3 III. A Few Romances 4:37
4 IV. Walking 1:10
5 V. Rebellion 5:04
6 VI. A Good Cry 4:38
7 VII. A Point of Contention 3:53
8 VIII. Sweeter 4:58
9 IX. David 7:31
Hila Plitmann, sop. & David Del Tredici, piano
Chana's Story, for mezzo-soprano & piano (1998)
10 The Fever of Love 5:34
11 Eating Babies 7:24
12 Tired Sex 2:09
13 The Stutter 5:50
14 Clear and Cold 5:20
15 Alone on the Mountain 8:31
Miriam Abramowitsch, mezzo-sop. & David Del Tredici, piano
