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Orphic Machine is a song cycle, with Carla Kihlstedt on vocals.  It was commissioned by Chamber Music America through their New Jazz Works program.

"The Orphic Machine is the poem: a severed head with face turned away that sings."

 -- Allen Grossman

When I was in college I took some literature courses with an amazing poet and thinker named Allen Grossman -- he had a way of reading books in order to find the story of the historical development of human culture.  The impact was very strong. 

A few years ago I went back to his work, mainly by way of a book called Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in Speculative Poetics.  This book contains the foundations of his poetical thought, presented as a group if interrelated aphorisms.  It examines some basic elements of civilization – the impulse toward song, the relation of self and other – in view of their place in the development of human consciousness, with a text whose structure itself replicates and illuminates the ideas being discussed.

When I proposed my project to Chamber Music America I stated that I intended to write a work which somehow related to the philosophical structures contained in the book, but I really didn’t know how I would approach this task.  In the interim, Tin Hat got involved in a project of writing songs based upon the poetry of e e cummings, and I started thinking about songs with words (especially when a singer like Carla Kihlstedt is involved!).  So when I came back to Allen Grossman, the impermeability of the sayings in the book, even though they are not “poems,” suddenly presented themselves as lyrics.  Now I find myself writing songs with words like

“The function of poetry is to obtain for everybody one kind of success at the limits of the autonomy of the will.”

Mr. Grossman writes: “this is a text for use, intended like a poem to give rise to thoughts about something else.” This has certainly been true for me – the unlikeliness of this type of lyric is leading to all kinds of new ideas in my writing!

The ensemble, an expanded version of my Quintet, couldn’t be finer.  It will involve:

Carla Kihlstedt, violin and voice

Greg Cohen, bass

Kenny Wollesen, vibraphone

Ron Miles, trumpet

Ches Smith, drums

Jeff Parker, guitar

Rob Sudduth, tenor saxophone

Myra Melford, piano

Ben Goldberg, clarinets