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"...a composer of impressive power who
responds well to his sources and who can
write utterly compelling music that relates
beautifully to our time."
Palm Beach Post.
"...one of our most inventive and
wickedly witty composers."
Chicago Classical Review.
The Metamorphoses of Paul Crabtree
featuring
Dive! a Water Music
and
An American Persephone
available from ARSISAUDIO
Paul Crabtree's innovative music
explores the worlds of popular culture and highbrow
art to find what is eternal in the everyday.
Follow
this link to a San Francisco Chronicle
article. June 1, 2001
-
Recent reviews -
Sedebat Mater
April 17 2009
Sedebat Mater
April 18 2009
The Metamorphoses of Paul Crabtree
June 9 2009
Five Romantic Miniatures
July 2 2009
Before graduating from the Music Faculty at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany,
Paul Crabtree was the keyboard player in a catastrophically unsuccessful garage band called Goats' Opera.
He grew up with an equal interest in rock culture and classical music, but was disappointed that his academic training never acknowledged the world of rock and pop, and
trans
planted to California in his early 20s.
Exposure to the musically permissive culture in the Bay Area led him to integrate the various strands of his personal history, to embrace and intermingle ideas as diverse as
Latin poetry and 1960s girl groups;
- Glenn Miller is Missing sets Emma
Lazarus' poetry (about the ecstasies of
music) as a jitterbug.
- Five Romantic Miniatures (from The Simpsons) bring cartoon sentiments into the concert hall.
- Annunciata combines the wiltingly
love-lorn Victorian poetry of Emmeline
Stuart-Wortley with Gabriel's message to
the Virgin.
Crabtree also uses objets trouves both alone and
alongside standard texts;
-
Three Letters to My Father use
the texts of
enigmatic hand-written notes which he found among
family papers.
-
Pax et Bonum is a response to
the sudden death of a young tenor
friend, whose last letter is quoted
ironically alongside a Shakespeare
sonnet on immortality.
- When Are We Leaving? intermingles a similar sonnet with some of Iris Murdoch's final ramblings as she was falling victim to Alzheimer's disease.
His
most ambitious work is The Museum Guard, a
one-hour chamber opera for performance in art
museums, based on the novel by Howard Norman.
Choral
Music
Mixed Voices:
Sacred
Annunciata
(Stuart-Wortley/Ave Maria) Yelton
Rhodes Music
I am the Rose of Sharon Yelton
Rhodes Music
Spirit
Songs -
Ezekiel Saw the Wheel
Berliner
Chormusik Verlag
My Lord, What a Morning
Berliner
Chormusik Verlag
I Want to be Ready
Berliner
Chormusik Verlag
Fix Me, Jesus
Berliner
Chormusik Verlag
Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?
Berliner
Chormusik Verlag
Click
here
for a 2006 radio performance by
Chicago a cappella.
Sunset
on Calvary
(Middle English) Yelton
Rhodes Music
Three Sacred Songs about Religion, Sex and Politics
1.
Mandorla
Mea (Rives)
2. When David Heard (2
Samuel/Law)
3. Burn Down the Mission (Teilhard
de Chardin)
Tenebrae -
Secular
An
American Persephone (Ovid,
Hughes, Millay, Corrie)
Dive: a water music
(Ovid/Hughes/Kline,
Kingsley, Feeney, Worniecki)
Ballet/Cantata for soprano, chorus, oboe, cello, harp, harpsichord, portative
organ and percussion.
Five
Bird
Songs
(Folk Song Arrangements) Yelton
Rhodes Music
1.
The Lark in the Morning
2. Fly
Up,
My Cock
3.
Twa Corbies
4. She's Like the Swallow
5. The
Lark in the Clear Air
Five
Romantic Miniatures (from
The Simpsons)
1.
Abe - You
remind me of a poem
2. Lisa - I
like Langdon Alger
3. Homer - Marge,
you make the best...
4. Marge - I
love you so much
5. Homer - Marge,
I need you
Glenn
Miller is Missing (Lazarus)
Yelton
Rhodes Music
Lullaby near the Railroad Tracks
Meanwhile
Midas at Sunset
Mit
Lust Tät Ich Ausreiten (traditional)
Yelton
Rhodes Music
Night
(Percival) Yelton
Rhodes Music
Per
Gladium Crux - Stanford Te Deum (Ambrose)
ReCuperario (sonnet #27)
Songs
at Year's End (Hughes)
Berliner
Chormusik Verlag
- There
Came a Day
- The
Seven Sorrows
- Snow
and Snow
- The Warm and the Cold
Sorrows End (sonnet #30)
Three Rose Madrigals Yelton
Rhodes Music
1. O How Much More
(sonnet #54)
2. The Forward Violet
(sonnet #99)
3. O Never Say
(sonnet #109)
Three
Victorian Love Lyrics Yelton
Rhodes Music
1. Renouncement
(Meynell)
2. First and Last Kiss
(Bourke
Marston)
3. Remember
(Rossetti)
War
Music Yelton
Rhodes Music
1.
Lovely on the Water
2.
When I Was On Horseback
When Are We Leaving?
(sonnet
#60/Murdoch) Frank
E. Warren Music
Women's Voices:
Spinning Dance
Green Summer
(Three Monochromes)
1. Summer Dawn
(Morris)
2. A June Day
(Todhunter)
3. Summer (Conder)
Men's Voices :
Three Letters to My Father
Pax et Bonum
(sonnet #81)
Orchestral Music:
Vegas
- Nightscape on Themes of Frank Sinatra (13mins.)
3333-4321-Timp+1-Str.
Vocal
Music:
Three Sonnets on Old American Hymn Tunes
(Male
Voice and Pipe Organ)
1. Alas, 'Tis
True/ Down at the Cross
2. Accuse Me
Thus/Need
3. That You Were Once
Unkind/Orwigsburg
(#1
is in the volume American Art Song for
the Sacred Service, published by Classical
Vocal Reprints)
Sedebat Mater
Song Sequence for Soprano, Countertenor and Strings
1)
Mrs. Robinson
(Simon)
2) Coriolanus Act 1 Scene iii
(Shakespeare)
3) Goliath's Mum
(Torr)
4) Two Women Came Unto Solomon
(1 Kings)
5) Conception
(Josephine Miles)
ON
THE DRAWING BOARD
Mad Scene from
The Ghost Train
Scena for mezzo-soprano, oboe, harp and string trio.
The Ghost Train
Chamber Opera for six singers and twelve instruments,
based on Arnold Ridley's 1921 play.
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
Dances for Chorus and Instruments
^ Return to Top
565
Bellevue Avenue No. 903
Oakland CA 94610
510
517 7950 ph
email
Paul@PaulCrabtree.net
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