“The End of It”: Contempo's 50th-Anniversary Commission

John Eaton will discuss his piece “The End of It,” commissioned by Contempo for their 50th-anniversary performance. This multimedia presentation, including excerpts from four previous song cycles and and a DVD excerpt from an opera, will point toward the new song cycle and will discuss the use of microtonal and new vocal and instrumental techniques. The poems that inspired and are set in “The End of It” move from the terror of confronting the end of life in some of Donne and Swenson to the ecstatic end of the Paradiso, with the Borsch serving as a transition.