Hecuba
A rock-leaning song cycle on Euripides' Hecuba, written with Oracle Hysterical.
Part of the Oracle Hysterical family
Premiere — Chicago Composers Orchestra · Constellation, Chicago - premiere · 2014-11-06
A song cycle built on Euripides’ Hecuba — the Queen of Troy at her lowest, enslaved, watching her children killed, then driven to revenge. I wrote it with the rest of Oracle Hysterical: Brad and Doug Balliett and Majel Connery. The four of us trade words, voices, and instruments across the piece.
We’d all been reading Greek plays, and Doug suggested this one. We opened to a random page, handed it to Majel, and she sang the whole first song’s line in a single take — it felt almost like divine inspiration.
It premiered with the Chicago Composers Orchestra in 2014. We recorded it with Jason Treuting on drums, released on National Sawdust Tracks in 2018, then re-released on Long Echo after that label folded. BBC Radio 3 called it “delightfully bonkers”; Brooklyn Rail called it “evocative art pop.”
Delightfully bonkers, really. BBC Radio 3
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Press
A lovely and elegant album about a terrifying, savage tragedy, with a beautifully bittersweet indie-rock sound. Gabriela Tedeschi , Brooklyn Rail , 2018
Performances
4 performances since 2014
- 2018-05-13 Oracle Hysterical National Sawdust, Brooklyn NY
- 2018-05-06 Oracle Hysterical Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
- 2017-09-02 Oracle Hysterical Spectrum NYC
- 2014-11-06 Chicago Composers Orchestra Constellation, Chicago - premiere