Bridgeville Troll

by Sarah Passemar

This song was for our Rural Residency program at Dell'Arte.  We went out to an elementary school deep in the country, interacted with the kids, and had 10 days to create a complete show.  The premise was: a troll steals the community fire truck (yes, I got to ride away on a fire truck cackling maniacally... I can check that off the bucket list), and the rest of the community has to bond together to defeat the troll and get the truck back.  

The song came really easily - simple chords, because I didn't really want to think too hard about playing anything in a moss costume.

Two words: Children's Theater.

OK, a couple more words.  Although I like this song, I'm also a little embarrassed by it.

Rocks & stones and

Tyrent's thrones

I'll throw your bones in the river

A raging flood 

Of roots and mud

And crimson blood by the river

With a stroke of luck

I came and took 

Your fire-truck to my river

I'll ease your strife

With the edge/(with a twist) of my knife

And I'll give your life to the river

You can't fight me

You're down to three

Your history ends at the river

Rock and bone

You'll all stand alone

And I'll turn you to stone by the river

I spent most of the time sewing a headdress out of Spanish moss, blue jay feathers, thistles, and various other nature stuffs, and sewing spanish moss to a sweat shirt.  

The best pics I have of the troll headdress.

Headdress with costume:

A look at the more complete costume:

Group photo on the back of the fire truck:

Almost Lover

by A Fine Frenzy

I listened to this song, figured out the chords, learned it, and recorded it all in the period of a couple hours.  Then I think I performed it that night at Stardough's open mike.

I really like A Fine Frenzy - she's one of my favorite musical artists.  This is from her first album, "One Cell In the Sea" which came out 2007.  She has a new album out called "Bomb In A Birdcage" (2009)

Almost Lover

Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind
Images

You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes
Clever trick

I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me

Chorus

Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

We walked along a crowded street
You took my hand and danced with me
Images

And when you left you kissed my lips
You told me you would never let forget these images, no

I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me

Chorus

I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that easy
To walk right in and out of my life?

Chours

Melodrama

I'm not going to speak too much about the painful process of this theater piece, except to say that I was miserable and not very much fun to work with during the 5 weeks of our Melodrama section.  (I figured out why I was such a horrid wretch about a year later, in a lovely "Ah Hah!" moment on the roof of the hostel in I was working.)



I composed everything in this piece, except for the violin, which Walken Schwigart composed and played.  It worked perfectly with our piece, which took place in a desert, and was very depressing.  Ronlin, our genius tyrant of a professor, actually gave me a shiny, rare compliment about it, which I treasure in the deepest part of my heart.

Hamlet

In the early months of Dell'Arte, we also put on a really awesome fifteen minute production of Hamlet at Dell'Arte which included Ophelia jumping from a high place, dumping her body in a trash can, throwing flour, and the King chowing down on chicken at Ophelia's funeral.  I think it ended up being one of my favorite theater pieces.

In the week and a half we had to throw it together, I quickly composed a bunch of stuff in an hour or so, only 1 of which was used: the "Larded" round.  But here's my favorite of the stuff.


Larded (round) - text by Shakespeare


Larded all with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the ground will not go
With true love's showers

Larded (w/accompaniment)


Dead and Gone (round) text by Shakespeare


She is dead and gone, lady
She is dead and gone
At his heels a grass green turf
At his head a stone.

Fugal Choral - (having fun with multiple vocal layers)


So, I guess I've now got a habit of putting songs from Shakespeare's plays to music.

Theater Camp

When I was a councillor at USPA summer camps in 2008, I met a bunch of really awesome musically talented high school students, and we had fun recording covers. I was able to get to know bands I'd never heard of them, and we covered some familiar bands as well. (I love singing along to songs I don't know - it tests my ability to foresee chord progressions. We'd pop the lyrics up on my laptop and I'd make up the harmonies.) This was also the first summer I'd never really tried "jamming" on the piano before.

I'm only going to put a couple of the covers we did up here, because they aren't rehearsed more than one play-through. Some, not even that.


These Days - Nico:
I think my absolute favorite is done with Serena Berman on melody, Tommy Schulz on guitar, and me on vocal harmony.


Part I - Band of Horses
I'd never heard of Band of Horses before that summer. This is Tommy on guitar and singing, me on harmony, and Taylor Bostwick and Claire Usherson on back-up (I think...)


Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
Tommy on guitar and singing, me on harmony, and Evan Boswell Buhmschwack-Greenwald on guitar and singing bits,


House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
Tommy, Evan, and me.


Mad Mad World - The Red Paintings
Tommy, Evan, and me.


Walk into the Sea - Tommy & Sarah
A jam of no consequence. I think it's really pretty, though.

Capstone Project

For my Senior project at Principia College, I put on an hour classical piano concert. This is the live performance in May 2008. I had a pretty dress, and I dyed my hair the day before the concert. It was unarguably burgundy, and I was terrified it looked awful, but it ended up matching the dress perfectly. Cameron Hanses did my hair all pretty. I think she was probably my biggest emotional support during that time. :)

The Music Department apparently convened at one point, and decided I wasn't going to be able to do a full hour, and tried to convince me to cut it down to a 1/2 hour concert.  I knew I would be disappointed with myself if I didn't live up to my full potential, and so I doubled my efforts, determined to prove my worth. When I finally did the concert, my sweet, lovely voice teacher, Sarah Rockebrand who was lending a hand shaping me up, leaned over to Marie, my strict but amazing piano professor, and said, "It's a miracle."   I think the concert was the best I've ever played in my life.

There was also a really funny (in retrospect) debacle to do with the program notes I prepared for the concert.  I had emailed them to someone a night or two before the concert, not bothering to take any more responsibility than that, assuming once I emailed the file, it would be taken care of.

Lo and behold, 5 minutes before the concert, Marie, my amazing (but very strict) piano professor told me there were no program notes.  I was nervous enough, already.  She told me I would have to announce the program to the audience.  I hadn't practiced announcing anything, and didn't know if I would remember the order of the names of the Bach pieces, the numbers of some of the movements, or the french names of the Debussy pieces.  I ended up doing OK, but that was a lesson to me in follow-through.


J.S. Bach - English Suite No.1 in A

I. Prelude


II. Allemande


III. Courante i & ii


IV. Sarabande


V. Bouree i & ii


VI. Gigue


Johannes Brahms - Rhapsody Op.79 No.2


Claude Debussy - Selections from Preludes, Book I

(dansuese de delphes) (the dancers of Delphi)


(la fille aved le cheveux lin) (the girl with the flaxen hair)


(des pas sur la neige) (footsteps in the snow)


(voiles) (sails or veils)


Franz Liszt - Hungarina Rhapsody No.13

Take oh Take

from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure

I think this was the first time I'd ever put something to music. I composed this right before the England Abroad when I was in France in the attic of my grandfather's house around August 2006, with the intention that it might be played during the Measure for Measure production that quarter.

I had JUST started learning guitar, so I barely knew chords, and had trouble getting from chord to chord.

Seth Bleecker was the original voice in the song.

Here is a video of him singing the piece in Measure for Measure rehearsal.

(and yes, it's sideways. apparently, youtube flips them. And I spent so long downloading a program to flip it on my computer, too!)

Take Oh Take these lips away
That so sweetly were forscorned
And those eyes, the break of Day
Lights that do mislead the morn
But these kisses bring again
Seals of love, but sealed in vain


Here is me singing the full piece, maybe a year or so later?

Fenice Fu

by Jacopo Da Bologna

I had just recorded "Thought Horse (Draft)" in winter 07, and now this amazing program on my computer Garage Band was waiting for me to experiment. I'd been going through a phase of Medieval/Renaissance music, so I decided to try learning and recording this song, which is actually meant to be sung by a man and a castrati: a man whose manhood has been taken from him to preserve his sweet pre-teen voice.

So, Ol' Jacopo, who lived in the mid 1300s wrote this song. I think it's a Madrigal.
It was in my NAWM (Norton Anthology of Western Music) (THANK YOU MUSIC HISTORY! SHOUT OUT TO DR. NEAR!) which I had bought for all the cool music.

Thought Horse

(The Pencil Piece)
by Sarah Passemar

I composed this when I was living in the Writing House at Principia college... winter quarter my senior year... ...2007?

It's the first song I ever composed in my life.
Well... besides a little piano ditty when I was in second grade for Odyssey of the Mind that everyone said sounded like the Adams Family theme song, despite the fact that I didn't even know who the Adams Family were.  (Our family had rabbit ears, and thus, our tv only sported 3 channels.)
Oh, yeah, and that hymn assignment thing for Diatonic Harmony class.

But this is the first one that counts.
Say I.
(And so say we all.)

I started by writing the lyrics, then recording the piano part, then the vocals, a bit of guitar, then a bass line (that was the quarter I bought my bass), and then, late at night, I recorded the percussion.  The percussion is pencils being tapped on the desk in a quiet "I don't want to disturb anyone, but I really can't stop making this music 'cause I'm in the zone" kind of way.

It was the first time I had used any sort of recording program, so it sounds a little messy and doesn't quiiiite line up. I had intended to re-record it, which is why it is still titled "Thought Horse (Draft)" (I don't actually really like the title, but it kind of stuck.) When I played it for the band a couple months ago, I explained how I had recorded it, and they dubbed it "The Pencil Piece."


(music players equipt with fancy colors for your viewing pleasure)

The lyrics:


I saddle my thoughts
And go for a ride
Through the foggy fields
Of tomorrow

I follow a path
Familiar and tried
Which I imagine
You've ridden before

Oh, but somehow
It seems that yesterday's lies
Are barricading
My way

And what little that is left
Of our cirulean skies
Is a friendless, godforsaken
Grey

Tomorrow is just
Another yesterday
With little left
Left up to chance

An overcast memory
On constant replay
Living out
A lifeless romance

I guess I should put
Your memory to pasture
But it's hard to change habits
Midstream

But the fragments of you
Are dissolving faster
Than the shrouded whisper
Of a dream