Songs for Murdered Sisters • Pentatone 2021
This 28-minute song cycle for baritone and piano or orchestra – with searing words by Margaret Atwood – was created to wake people up to the global epidemic of gender-based violence.
This work was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera and Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra for baritone Joshua Hopkins, in memory of his sister Nathalie Warmerdam.
“Songs for Murdered Sisters is at once powerful and tender, and also prompts a remarkable vocal performance from Hopkins…Beautifully performed here, the cycle ultimately transcends the terrible circumstances of its conception to offer both a strident piece of social activism and an affecting work of art.”