Mad Moonight (mezzo-soprano and orchestra) – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: Louis Jenkins

Instrumentation: Mezzo-Soprano and orchestra

Duration: Approx. 6'30"

Date Written:  2022 (orchestrated 2024)

Commissioned: Commissioned by Schubert Club for mezzo-soprano Georgia Jacobson with funding provided by Barbara Brown and John Michel in memory of soprano Ruth Jacobson

Composer’s note: It all began when John Michel asked me to set three poems from Louis Jenkins’ The Mad Moonlight, published by Will o’ the Wisp Books in 2019. The project, under the auspices of the Schubert Club and funded by John Michel and Barbara Brown, has since mushroomed into the commissioning of a dozen composers for settings of almost all of the poems in the volume. John and Louis, both from Duluth, MN, were dear friends until Louis’s death in December of 2019. The poems are light-hearted and wry; deeper meaning lurks beneath the surface. After the initial performance at the Landmark Center in St. Paul, John suggested an orchestrated version – a wonderful opportunity to enhance the peculiar spookiness of these poems