July 31, 2011

Silken Roses

And now, for something completely different…

Here’s a song I wrote in 1983, called Silken Roses. The lyrics are by Frances Middlebrook, who briefly studied privately with me. During that time, she asked me if I would set a poem of hers to music, and I gladly did so. The poem is about a painful and surprising loss of a lover (she had, in fact, just gone through a difficult divorce), and the words immediately suggested to me a country-western song. I think Frances was surprised that I had responded to her words as I did, but I could hear it no other way. And, bless her heart, she hired a group to record it.

It’s now a fairly distant memory, but as I recall, the group sight-read the song, asked for my feedback, went through it again, and then recorded it. It was impressive!

Not long after that, I completely lost touch with Frances. If anyone out there knows her, please let her know I’ve been thinking about her.  And I am delighted to have this anomalous piece of music—well, not entirely anomalous, if you know everything I have written—as part of my output.