June 12, 2004
8 pm

Tickets: $20
Box Office: 603-924-7585

E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962) upended modern poetry with his radical concepts. Also a painter, Cummings shaped and scattered his words on the page, to shock and delight his readers. His poems range from sweetly romantic to dark and hauntingly evocative.

New Enlanders may be interested to know that: E,E. Cummings was born in Cambridge, Mass. His father Edward C. Cummings was the first professor of sociology at Harvard, (E.E. Cummings also attended Harvard), and then Unitarian Minister of the South Congregational Church, at Exeter and Newbury Streets in Back Bay, Boston.

In 1899, the family bought a house in the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains near Silver Lake, New Hampshire. The family spent idyllic summers there, and eventually they bought a neighboring farm, which they called "Joy Farm"---and which Cummings' mother left to him. He loved Joy Farm, and spent every summer there for the rest of his life.

Ellen Mandel has written music for dozens of plays from Shakespeare to Stoppard at New York City's Jean Cocteau Rep, where she is resident composer, and for many other theaters. Every Play's an Opera (Brite Records) is a collection of her theater music. Leighton Kerner of the Village Voice has called Mandel's music "Freshly inventive and emotionally on-target."

Todd Almond a Cincinnati Conservatory graduate, was named Best Actor twice at the city's annual Entertainment Awards: for his Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Kemp in Vigil. Almond has released two solo CDs: Try To Hear, Try To Say, and Deep North Woods. "Almond's got killer pipes," wrote the Cincinnati City Beat. "He brings raw emotion to each song he performs."

Press clips for a wind has blown the rain away

Alan Cheuse, NPR's All Things Considered:

"A striking collaboration: the playful poetry of e.e. cummings set to music by New York composer Ellen Mandel and sung beautifully by Cincinnati tenor and actor Todd Almond.

Margo Jefferson, New York Times :

"Mandel's Cummings songs are ardent and spiky... refreshingly organic."

Marvin Ward, CVNC.com::

"These are true art songs...Mandel seems to be among those composers, like Schubert, Fauré, and Rorem for whom writing songs comes naturally and whose songs marry the music to the texts seamlessly. Almond's voice is perfect for these works... he knows just how to interpret the songs.