A Concert of the Songs of Paul Bowles, presented by Friends & Enemies of New Music
Songs by Paul Bowles
Pianist – Irene Herrmann
Soloist – Carole Blakenship
Program Overview
This program of songs by Paul Frederic Bowles will cover over fifty years of his song writing, from his earliest known cycle to his final song, written in honor of Aaron Copland’s 86th birthday.
Best known as a novelist, Paul Frederic Bowles (1910–1999) was also a composer, music critic, poet, translator, and official recorder of native North African music for the Library of Congress. Paul Bowles wrote in many musical genres, including opera, piano works, chamber works, theater music, film scores, ballets, musique concrète, two cantatas, and a zarzuela. In addition to works in these genres, Bowles wrote more than eighty art songs. Approximately half of them have been published, but only a few may be found in print today.
Carole Blankenship , soprano, is Assistant Professor of Music at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She is heard regularly in recitals, chamber music concerts, and oratorio performances in the Memphis area and the region. Dr. Blankenship is an active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Her areas of expertise are German Lieder, American art song, oratorio, and chamber works. In April 2004, Dr. Blankenship received the Graduate Document Award for the most outstanding thesis as judged by the faculty at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis for her dissertation titled “The Unpublished Songs of Paul Bowles.” Her research continues in American song, particularly the songs created under the direction of the Federal Music Project 1935-1940. Dr. Blankenship teaches voice as well as Twentieth-Century American Music and Politics. She is co-director of the Memphis Music and Religion Archive at Rhodes.
Irene Herrmann began her personal collaboration and friendship with Paul Bowles in 1992 and continued to visit him in Morocco until he died in 1999. Her visits with Paul Bowles included lively conversation about his music as well as his reminiscences of the music scene in New York in the 30s and 40s, colourful portraits of his many musical and artistic friends. Her enthusiasm for Bowles’s music resulted in a variety of performances (including many premieres of his long-forgotten and unavailable scores). Her recording on Koch International includes both chamber music and songs. Since Bowles’s death in 1999, Ms. Herrmann has become the executor and curator of his music estate and continues to cultivate interest his music as well as distribute scores of his compositions.
