Ted Hearne's Katrina Ballads, scored for five singers and eleven instrumentalists, uses prose fragments from the public record in the days following Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans. It's a brilliant concept that Hearne executes with sensitivity and brash indignation. The work was premiered in Charleston, SC, at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival and was the 2009 winner of the prestigious Gaudeamus International Composers Award. The songs and interludes are strongly jazz influenced and many have a driving rock ...
Read More
Ted Hearne's Katrina Ballads, scored for five singers and eleven instrumentalists, uses prose fragments from the public record in the days following Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans. It's a brilliant concept that Hearne executes with sensitivity and brash indignation. The work was premiered in Charleston, SC, at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival and was the 2009 winner of the prestigious Gaudeamus International Composers Award. The songs and interludes are strongly jazz influenced and many have a driving rock beat. The musical core of the piece is Hearne's devastating setting of quotes by two members of the Bush family. George W. Bush's infamous pronouncement, "Brownie you're doin' a heck of a job," is a dazzling improvised-sounding vocal jazz solo performed by Hearne himself, in which the single phrase is fragmented and repeated maniacally for almost three minutes. The second is Barbara Bush's observations on the hurricane's refugees housed in Houston's Astrodome; she finds it "sort of...
Read Less
Add this copy of Katrina Ballads to cart. $20.76, new condition, Sold by newtownvideo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from huntingdon valley, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by New Amsterdam.
