Lose yourself in Love. Loss. Life.

Depending on what stage of life we are in, our experiences and emotions can vary drastically. The hills and valleys of life are what keep us on our toes, teach us lessons, and ultimately, make us stronger and more interesting people. Love. Loss. Life. uses some of the gems of the baritone repertoire to display a wide variety of these emotions and feelings through very vivid and direct music.

The program, like how many things in life should, starts with love. Maurice Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée is about one of literature's most famous men, Don Quixote. His love for Dulcinea is one for the ages, and through the three movements we see him go through a wide range of emotions, and hear Ravel’s Spanish dance influenced accompaniments. Chanson romanesque describes how he would do anything to make her happy. Chanson épique is a prayer to Saint Michel asking for her to come to him. The cycle ends with the drinking song Chanson à boire, where a rejected Quixote drunkenly tells us about his feelings.

Loss is a part of life, comes in many forms, and is unavoidable. Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder might be one of the saddest and most poignant pieces ever written for voice, and deals with arguably one of the hardest things we may have to endure in our lives. This cycle is about a couple who is dealing with the death of their children. Mahler does not disappoint in his musical characterizations of Friedrich Ruckert's heart wrenching text. The descriptive music helps us to understand their heavy hearts, and despite the tumult through much of the cycle, it ends with a glorious, peaceful feeling of where these sweet children have gone.

Despite the ups and downs previously described, we end the program on a good note with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel. Robert Louis Stevenson's poems are about adventure, the hardness of life, and what it is like being a vagabond.