Solitude, Sunset: Songs of the American Northeast

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Katie Zaffrann, soprano

Katie is an actor, vocalist and teaching artist who has performed for audiences of 4 to 4000, from Shakespeare & Company to National Sawdust, in New York City, San Francisco, and along the eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida. Regional theater credits include Delaware Theater Company, Shakespeare & Company, freeFall Theatre, the John W. Engeman Theater, Cape May Stage, Opera House Arts, Chenango River Theatre and more. She has originated roles in numerous world premiere plays and musicals and brought her unique self to classics like Portia in The Merchant of Venice and The Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol. She also wrote and curated her one-woman show Marry Me… a Little: a wedding/anxiety cabaret, about the terror, bliss, panic and joy of getting married, which has played NYC and San Francisco.

She starred in, and executive produced, the award-winning musical short film NAKED, a whimsical romp about living life to the fullest based on Mike Pettry's song “Without a Stitch On.” NAKED played at film festivals worldwide and is now streaming on IndieFlix. For more information, visit http://nakedmoviemusical.com.

Katie was an original member and the Founding President of the award-winning professional chamber choir Choral Chameleon. She teaches through her private studio, empowering students to express their fullest selves onstage.

She holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from Syracuse University, where she was the recipient of the Edward Greer Award for Classic Acting. She studies voice in New York City with the genius Ruth Williams Hennessy, acting at John Strasberg Studios and has also trained classically at Shakespeare & Co. and at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, England. She is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association.

With special thanks to Alfred.

Find me on Instagram @kzastrophe or on Facebook.

ayumi okada, piano

A native of Kyoto, Japan, Ayumi is a musical theatre/classical music composer and pianist based in NYC.

She is a recipient of the BMI Jerry Harrington Awards For Outstanding Creative Achievement in Musical Theatre, and a Special Mention at the Women in the Arts & Media Coalition Collaboration Awards. Her musical theatre songs have been performed at various iconic venues in NYC including The Duplex, Signature Theatre, The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, and Feinstein’s/54 Below. 

A number of her classical works have been performed internationally by Listen Closely, A.W. Duo, Musica Verto Novo, and Sumizome Symphony Orchestra, among others. Her first EP, "Here, Where The Land Ends And The Sea Begins,” along with several other chamber pieces are published and available through Abundant Silence.

In addition to music directing and performing her own works, she has served as a music director/pianist for several musical theatre/cabaret shows including "The Seven" (Columbia Stages), "The Gourmet Cabaret" (Bristol Valley Theater), and "Change The World – A Cabaret Night" (MuSE).

Ayumi holds M.M. in Music Composition from Mannes College of Music and is a member of BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop, Maestra, and Landscape Music.

Find me on Instagram or Facebook.

concert program

Emily Dickinson (music by Alfred Heller*)

I’m Nobody

In the Silent West

Solitude

Will There Really Be a Morning?* (music by Ricky Ian Gordon)

Sunset

Edna St. Vincent-Millay (music by Ricky Ian Gordon)

Afternoon on a Hill

Souvenir

The Spring and the Fall

Robert Frost (music by Alfred Heller)

The Pasture

A Minor Bird

Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter

Tree at My Window

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Road Not Taken

poetry

Set 1: Emily Dickinson

I’m Nobody

I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you — Nobody — too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd banish us, you know.

How dreary — to be — Somebody!

How public — like a Frog —

To tell one's name — the livelong June —

To an admiring Bog!

In the Silent West

On this wondrous sea - sailing silently -
Ho! Pilot! Ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar -
Where the storm is o'er?

In the silent West
Many - the sails at rest -
Then anchors fast.
Thither I pilot thee -
Land! Ho! Eternity!
Ashore at last!

Solitude

There is a solitude of space,

A solitude of sea,

A solitude of death, but these

Society shall be,

Compared with that profounder site,

That polar privacy,

A soul admitted to itself —

Finite Infinity.

Will There Really Be a Morning?

Will there really be a "Morning"?
Is there such a thing as "Day"?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called "Morning" lies!

Sunset

The Sun went down — no Man looked on —
The Earth and I, alone,
Were present at the Majesty —
He triumphed, and went on —

The Sun went up — no Man looked on —
The Earth and I and One
A nameless Bird — a Stranger
Were Witness for the Crown —

set 2: Edna St. Vincent-Millay

Afternoon on a Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

Souvenir

Just a rainy day or two
In a windy tower,
That was all I had of you—
Saving half an hour.

Marred by greeting passing groups
In a cinder walk,
Near some naked blackberry hoops
Dim with purple chalk.
I remember three or four
Things you said in spite,
And an ugly coat you wore,
Plaided black and white.

Just a rainy day or two
And a bitter word.
Why do I remember you
As a singing bird? 

The Spring and the Fall

In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year, 
I walked the road beside my dear. 
The trees were black where the bark was wet. 
I see them yet, in the spring of the year. 
He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach 
That was out of the way and hard to reach. 

In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year, 
I walked the road beside my dear. 
The rooks went up with a raucous trill. 
I hear them still, in the fall of the year. 
He laughed at all I dared to praise, 
And broke my heart, in little ways. 

Year be springing or year be falling, 
The bark will drip and the birds be calling. 
There's much that's fine to see and hear 
In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year. 
'Tis not love's going hurt my days. 
But that it went in little ways.

set 3: robert frost

The Pasture

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away 

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may): 

I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too. 

I'm going out to fetch the little calf 

That's standing by the mother. It's so young, 

It totters when she licks it with her tongue. 

I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

A Minor Bird

I have wished a bird would fly away,

And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door

When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong

In wanting to silence any song.

Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter

The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on a bough,
And that was all there was to see
In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill
I judged that such a crystal chill
Was only adding frost to snow
As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.

Tree At My Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

    I took the one less traveled by,

    And that has made all the difference.