Description
Tracklist:
1: A – Girl Descending a Staircase
2: B – Childhood Friends
3: C – Wasted
4: D – One Horse Open Sleigh
5: E – Death by Peach
6: F – Sucker
7: G – Hide ‘n Seek
8: H – Waiting
9: I – Ida and the Undines
10: J – Cabinet of Curiosity
11: K – New Moon
12: L – Pica
13: M – Frisson
14: N – Ennui
15: O – Awl and Nothing
16: P – Knock, Knock!
17: Q – Quagmire
18: R – In Flagrante
19: S – Stupid Fort
20: T – Wooden Boxes
21: U – I Don’t Mean Gurgle
22: V – Train of Thought
23: W – Ice Cathedral
24: X – Gnaw
25: The Problem of the Tower and the Clouds
26: Love Song for Dolly
26 Little Deaths the new album from composer, singer and violinist Carla Kihlstedt and the contemporary ensemble Present Music celebrates the macabre wit of iconic writer and illustrator Edward Gorey (1925-2000), whose 100th birthday fell on February 22, 2025.
An hour-long set of 26 miniatures for singing violinist and chamber orchestra, 26 Little Deaths is inspired by Goreys macabre childrens book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Illustrated in his distinctive crosshatched pen-and-ink style, the book chronicles the grisly, alphabetical deaths of 26 children: A is for Amy who fell down the stairs / B is for Basil, assaulted by bears, with the morbid roll-call culminating in Y is for Yorick whose head was knocked in and Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.
Following in the footsteps of Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill, who moved seamlessly between art song, pop song and cabaret, Kihlstedt has created a work that captures the pathos, humor and wit of Goreys indelible images.
I stepped into the pictures to look around beyond their frame and find the story beyond the absurdist barbarism, she explains. Like Gorey with his Gashlycrumb drawings, in most of the pieces I leave the moment of mortality up to you to imagine, or not. Despite outward signs to the contrary, this piece is not about death, nor is the iconic book on which its based. Neither is it a mourning, but rather, a meditation. They dance between the banality of life and the inexhaustible oddness of the human imagination.
