blood of a poet (2023)

for 3 keyboards doubling voice, melodica, accordion, celeste

A re-scoring of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 film Le sang d’un poète

Program note:

“The Blood of a Poet” filmmaker Jean Cocteau wrote “if each of us finds in this film a meaning of his own, I consider that I have achieved my purpose.” This sentiment gave me comfort to search for my own meaning as I created a new score to Cocteau’s fantastical, wild, and at times perplexing set of four vignettes:

I. The wounded hand or the scars of a poet

II. Do the walls have ears?

III. The snowball fight

IV. The profanation of the host.

What does surreal sound like? Some ideas I had as I set out to create the score were to use ordinary harmonies in combinations that do not normally belong together, to explore the disorienting and hallucinatory quality of a dream, and to attempt to tap into the finding power of the unconscious mind. Musically, I was inspired by composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison’s dystopic 2001 film “Decasia” and the concept of “surreal tonality” which I learned about from composer Sky Macklay.

Live video excerpts from the first performance, thanks to the wonderful Eneida Larti and Kate Skinner for playing with me:

Still photos from first performance, photo credit Stacy Isenbarger: