A spokesperson says---

“...A Jewish American memoir is told through “Muriel’s Songs,” a monodrama by Eric Chasalow... The mezzo-soprano Sharon Harms performs with the Talea Ensemble ...

Chasalow was inspired by the memoirs of his grandmother Muriel Gellert Chasalow (1903-2000) to compose this set of songs, which traverses the tumult of 20th century America from a very personal perspective. Each song inhabits its own musical world with stylistic points of departure from Baroque to Tin Pan Alley, The Beatles, Latin Jazz and Disco to Milton Babbitt.

The stories - which cover Muriel’s experiences coming of age and through adulthood, including piano lessons, marriage, and family vacations - were pulled from a collection of works she had written at a senior center creative writing course when she was in her eighties. "I extracted a number of dramatic situations from the book, composing a poem on each, often incorporating Muriel’s sentences to give a sense of her voice," says the composer.

The April 23 concert also features Alex Weiser's "Coney Island Days" (a love letter to Weiser's own grandmother) and Joan Tower's "Petroushskates."..."