Departure Duo: Nina Guo, soprano and Edward Kass, double bass
Katherine Balch - Vidi l’angelo nel marmo (2015)
Jesse Maker - Seer/Seen (2019)
Amy Beth Kirsten - yes I said yes I will Yes. (2012)
Tomás Gueglio - Murmelnszenen (2024)
Sarah Gibson - The Boys Are There (2020)
Batya MacAdam-Somer, violin and voice
Carolyn Chen - Some dragons (2019)
Some dragons is a song cycle for singing violinist on the theme of exploration and discovery. Each movement sets the words or voice of a different explorer, including
I. a poem by Estella Lauter on an encounter with a paper-cutting artist in China
II. a summary of a scientific paper by Roland Hilgartner and Mamisolo Raolison Hilgartner discovering moths that drink the tears of sleeping birds in Madagascar
III. a note by chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin written upon discovering the helical structure of DNA
IV. advice from Amelia Earhart
V. the pirate code of the Widow Ching, or Chih Shih, most successful pirate in history
VI. the account of Elizabeth Cochrane, or Nellie Bly, the journalist who circumnavigated the world in 72 days
VII. a radio interview with Lynne Cox, American long distance swimmer who swam across the Bering Strait during the Cold War
Lyrics
I. Two dragons
Estella Lauter
an artist who cuts paper
asks for my birth year,
folds a small red paper in half
and begins to cut with scissors
smaller than we use for nails.
In less than ten minutes he hands me
a double dragon, delicate, precise…
I carry my two red dragons humbly.
No matter how many lives I’ve lived,
I am no Emperor. Two is plenty for me
II. Moths drink
summarized from Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0581), article by Roland Hilgartner and
Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner
Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds. They mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer,
antelope or crocodiles, which cannot brush them away. But there are none on Madagascar. Birds
can fly away. But sleeping birds can’t. Sleeping birds have two eyelids closed. No soft straw is
enough. You need a proboscis with hooks and barbs to anchor you. Shaped like an ancient
harpoon.
III. Helix
Rosalind Franklin
Conclusion: Big helix in several chains, phosphates on outside, phosphate-phosphate inter- helical bonds disrupted by water. Phosphate links available to proteins.
While the X-ray evidence cannot, at present, be taken as direct proof that the structure is helical,
other considerations discussed below make the existence of a helical structure highly probable.
IV. Paper tigers
Amelia Earhart
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers.
Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it. What do dreams know of boundaries?
V. Weightless dragons
Widow Ching / Chih Shih
I commanded over eighteen hundred sailing ships, eighty thousand pirates.
(Blackbeard had four ships.)
I sowed fire, havoc.
Fifteen years of methodical adventuring.
I challenged empires – British, Portuguese, Qing dynasty.
My ends:
Each night, flocks of weightless dragons rise into the sky
to tell me a story, convince me to retire.
Undefeated, the vixen seeks dragon’s wing.
VI. 72 days
Nellie Bly
I need a vacation. Why not take a trip around the world?
Along the way, I saw Suez Canal.
I saw England, France, Brindisi, Colombo, Aden, Hong Kong, Japan,
a Chinese leper colony, adopted a monkey in Singapore,
on steamships, railroads, I sent reports by submarines and telegraphs.
Home to Hoboken in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes and 14 seconds.
VII. Face water
Lynne Cox
First to swim the Straits of Magellan in Chile
First woman to swim Cook Strait in New Zealand
First to swim around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa
I swam a mile in Antarctica
Crossed Lake Titicaca at 12,500 feet of elevation with unidentified biting creatures
Twice held the record for fastest crossing of the English Channel
And in 1987, I crossed the near-freezing waters of the Bering Strait
I swam from the U.S. to the Soviet Union in the middle of the Cold War
How do you open a border that’s been closed for 50 years?
How do you bridge the distance between two countries that have been involved in a Cold War
battle?
I jumped into the water, an instant loss of breath
You pop out of the water, your eyes are open, you’re gasping for breath
I put my face in the water and swam as fast as I could go
All I could feel was this cold draw, like a huge vampire just pulling heat from my body
My fingers were totally grey like the hands of a cadaver
The compass was rusty, I might miss the island
Suddenly, the motor of small skiff
Cliffs before us, I’m freezing cold
I had to go another half mile, because if I touch rock instead of a human hand,
What have I done? Nothing.
There’s been no connection with people on the opposite shore.
I swam.
I extended my arms. Two Russians grabbed me
I instantly felt the heat from their hands
The Soviet doctor hugged me
To have this human contact, after so many years growing up afraid of the Soviets
For the first time in 40 years the border was opening between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.