Dramatic Song Cycle for Tenor & Ensemble (2012) |
Libretto by David James Brock, additional text by William Taylor |
Tenor, Cl, Vln, Guitars/Electric Bass, Pno/Keyboard, Electronic Percussion & Drums, Marimba |
Duration: 26″ |
Score :: Lyrics |
Commissioned by The Paul Dresher Ensemble & The San Francisco Foundation |
Premiere date: December 14, 2012, Z-space, San Francisco |
The Paul Dresher Ensemble with James Benjamin Rodgers |
This monodrama on American anti-hero Charles Arthur Floyd (Pretty Boy Floyd) presents an alternate view focusing on the pathos of Floyd’s isolation, rather than his popular image as a daring bank robber.
Typically, Charles Arthur Floyd is described as a handsome, ruthless bank robber. Many claimed he was a depression-era Robin Hood. This is debatable, but it’s true he gave away large portions of his “earnings” to friends, family and even acquaintances – those who sheltered him, poor Oklahoma farmers and others like him, struggling to get along during hard times. Pretty Boy was, by birth, a farmer, at a time when the land wasn’t providing sustenance. He was a dreamer and a self-starter. And if we grant that his chosen “field” was bank-robbery, then, within his field he was an exemplary American – innovative, talented, a risk-taker with vision. Of course the banks were not looked on kindly by the majority of Americans, especially in poor rural Oklahoma, and thus Floyd’s folk-hero status increased with each daring, seemingly impossible robbery and near capture followed by incredible escape. And as his infamy grew, his freedom shrank, at the hands of the young |