Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Rhapsody on a Windy Night, also the title of T S Eliot’s unique and compelling poem draws its inspiration from Eliot and the rapidly changing world of the industrialized 19th century. The center of European culture shifted in the poet’s time to Paris and the city’s synergetic energy was felt in all genres of the arts. Baudelaire’s ground-breaking Fleurs du Mals, which greatly impacted T. S. Eliot’s work; words of Edgar Allan Poe, so revered and translated by Baudelaire; the impressionistic and deeply chromatic tonal palette of Debussy and Faure’s string quartets; and the intoxicating French atmosphere also evident in Stravinsky’s sensibility, are all merged together in this program. We bring these connections forward with the premiere of Eliane Aberdam’s haunting and imaginative new work, A Demon in my View, fusing words of Verlaine and Poe with great sensitivity and with sparkling improvisations on harmonica of Chris Turner.