The Mountain & Tidewater Songs

The Mountain and Tidewater Songs are a set of six pieces for baritone, cello, piano, and violin. The songs are drawn from a series of poems by Daniel Mark Epstein, which appear in "No Vacancies in Hell" (Liveright, 1973). A deep sense of place, as well as the sweep, lyricism, and warmth of nineteenth-century American life inform both the poetry and music. The cycle charts the journey and reflections of an exile as he leaves behind the towns, countryside, and people he has known. These places and characters, like the apparitions of memory, become an interior landscape, where romance, adventure, duels, buffoonery, loss, villainy, and kindness all play out in ever-swirling reverie and drama.