Alone (2021)

from the Falling Between the Worlds Song Cycle, an ongoing collaborative project

Duration

3 minutes and 30 seconds

Instrumentation

Mezzo-Soprano and Piano

First Performance

May 7, 2021 at Baldwin Hall in Durham, NC
Composer: Dayton Kinney
Poet: Ann Witherspoon
Mezzo-Soprano: Sandra Cotton
Piano: David Heid

Program Notes

This beginning of a song cycle, Falling Between the Worlds, is based on Ann Witherspoon’s collection poems of the same name. Witherspoon wrote these poems based on her experiences as a woman living in a senior community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through her poems, she reveals her inner monologues from the pandemic, ranging from isolation and fear to hope and faith through the raw perspective of an elderly woman trapped within a high-risk community. This ongoing collaborative project hopes to complete setting Witherspoon’s 45 poems from the collection.

This movement, “Alone,” is inspired by the separation of people by glass, where the comfort of solitude warps into desperate isolation. Musically, the voice seeks and longs for the support of the harmonies by its piano accompaniment. However, much like loved ones separated by a tempered glass window, the human connection between the two performers continues wanting and waiting. This piece was recorded in Baldwin Hall at Duke University, Durham, NC on March 24, 2021 for the [dnme] digital concert (directed by Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant) that aired on May 7, 2021. Sandra Cotton (Mezzo-Soprano) and David Heid (Piano) perform.