Below is an excerpt from Delos Director Carol Rosenberger‘s new memoir, To Play Again, about when she first came across the music of Mark Abel:

Carol Rosenberger and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano with composer Mark Abel during the recording sessions for Time And Distance

As I continue as caretaker of Delos, there are always exciting developments on the horizon—some carefully planned and others completely unexpected. And I always wish I could share them with Amelia and John. One such delightful surprise project was American composer Mark Abel’s The Dream Gallery.

I had settled down one afternoon to listen to a stack of demo CDs, which usually means listening to about ten minutes of each demo and then putting it into one of two piles: “To Be Explored” or “Not Right for Delos.” When I got to The Dream Gallery, however, time stopped. The song cycle for seven different vocal soloists and orchestra drew me into its drama for its full seventy minutes. All I could do was marvel at the musical and dramatic ingenuity that made me eager to know more about each of the seven California characters I was meeting during the cycle. I laughed in some places and wept at the end, when the last character sings of picturing “the setting sun over the Pacific’s horizon … it will inspire eternally.” I kept thinking how much Amelia and John would have loved it. And now (at the time of this writing) we are working on another of Mark Abel’s unique creations: a poignant new opera Home Is a Harbor, about a California family and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Amelia and John would have loved this one, too.

Read More in Carol Rosenberger’s new memoir, To Play Again

Mark Abel’s Delos Discography