We are quickly approaching the final quarter of “download of the week.” I thought I’d offer a few things that are not released.

This weeks offering is a song from a 1-hour-long song cycle entitled Smokestack Arias. Based on events of the Everett Massacre, I wrote this piece in late 2011, which turned out to be tricky, because it was also in the final 3 months leading up to the opening of the Royal Room.

I have had a lifelong interest in the history of the American labor movement, and the Everett massacre was an iconic event which also happened essentially just up the road from where I live in Seattle, Washington. The history of Everett is fascinating, start here (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre) and then keep on. Once destined to be THE city at the end of the transcontinental railroad, its the quintessential story of the settling, European settling that is, of the West, and the saga of bust and boom. The event happened in 1916, so this year is the centennial of the event. I plan to present the entire song cycle in Seattle on November 5th, four days before our next presidential election. Suffice it to say that it is prescient how familiar the issues of those days still our in these days. So much has changed, and so much remains the same.

I didn’t want to make a literal piece, the piece is really an abstraction, and it does not follow a linear narrative. I also wanted to work with three particular women, the soprano Maria Mannisto, the pianist Cristina Valdes, and to write the text-Robin Holcomb. The actual history of the Everett Massacre, is centered almost entirely around men, but of course that is what we have been told, and of course women were involved, in any number of manner, throughout the entire story. So I picked a set of men-the sheriff, the worker, the labor organizer, the ferry boat captain, a man who was shot, the journalist, the mayor and so on, and asked Robin to imagine a female character that was related in some manner to each of these historical figures. In the end all the songs, and narrative such as it is, is told from a woman’s perspective, albeit all of them fictitious. In the end another artist I admire tremendously, the choreographer Dayna Hanson, came in and directed.

This song is entitled “Only the Truth.” The description from the program is as follows: “A newspaper man’s wife testifies that her husband reports the lies behind the facts and publishes a deeper version of the truth.”

This recording comes from a radio preview of the piece recorded in Seattle on KUOW with Dave Beck hosting. I hope to record the entire piece later this year.

I hope you enjoy the music.