The concept of "And Then She Said" evolved while I was working on the music for the production of "Medea-Plays" conceived and directed by Ed Isser at the Stanford Drama department. Ed had the ingenious idea to use four narrators, backstage, each reciting a different version of the Medea story in a different language (Greek, Latin, French, or German), while four actors on the center stage spoke in English. The rich musical possibilities that this idea offered attracted me immediately. With Ed's permission, I recorded the four narrators in the four languages. They spoke the text just as in the play, but I also included some variations such as having them whisper the text, or sing it on certain specified pitches. I then processed those recordings with a Lexicon digital reverberator, and combined them with some of the computer-generated sounds I had used for the original Medea score. The actress does not play the role of Medea; instead I chose to juxtapose the Greek myth and an opposite idea: the Judeo-Christian symbolism of child sacrifice as the ultimate religious commitment, as in the stories of Isaac and Jesus. The story that I adapted for this piece is that of Hanna …

Faculty recital performed at the UNT College of Music

Faculty recital performed at the UNT College of Music