EDITION PETERS ALDRIDGE Keillor Songs For Mezzo Soprano & Piano Poems By Garrison Keillor

- Mezzo-soprano and Piano
- Poems by Garrison Keillor
- Commissioned by Jennifer Rivera

"Keillor Songs were composed in late May and June of 2012 in Montclair, New Jersey and at the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina.  They were commissioned by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera, who had sung previously on Garrison Keillor's NPR radio show Prairie Home Companion.  She asked him to send her several of his poems that he thought might be suitable for musical settings.  From those poems, I chose five to set:  Unification, Table Grace, Fatherhood, Guardian, and Wedding March.  The five poems explore several themes in both serious and light-hearted ways: from love to sex to death to marriage and children.  Beneath their simple surface, these poems often express profound, original, and sometimes hilarious insights into our human condition.  I tried to match that surface simplicity in my musical settings, and let the stories of these five poems sing out as clearly as possible.  They should be sung and played with this clarity and this poetic and musical simplicity in mind." -- Robert Livingston Aldridge