Recording Leaving CLE: A Song Cycle

As a musical theater composer, my creative focus is collaborating on musical stories with bookwriter-lyricists and setting their words to music.  Last year, I re-purposed a hat and wrote a book of poetry and multi-genre text called Leaving CLE    poems of nomadic dispersal, published by Miami University Press, a book inspired by my family's complicated reverse migration story from Ohio and the Northeast  to  post Jim Crow-era Alabama.  After generating all of this text, the words started calling me to set them to music. I heeded the call! Now Leaving CLE is also two solid hours of scored, sung and performed music. It is a song cycle from my depths, which I have been performing with my band, Namaroon. Funds will be used for recording studio time, recording engineering, mix and mastering costs, musicians' fees, reheasal studio rental, score copying and CD and vinyl press. I have scored the music for piano, keyboards, voice ensemble, woodwinds, violin, guitar, bass, drums, percussion and turntables.

I have dedicated my arts advocacy to promoting new and diverse voices in music, theater and poetry. I am deeply grateful for your help in launching my own long overdue "soul" project.

Warmly,
"J"