My latest CD, The Ocean of Eternity, is to be released on April 26, 2022 on the Acis label.
The CD focuses on themes of life, longing and mortality, and contains several world premiere recordings. The centerpiece is The Ocean of Eternity, a song cycle scored for the unusual combination of soprano, soprano saxophone and piano. It sets the poetry of Anne Ranasinghe, a German Jew who, after escaping the Nazis and losing her entire family in the war, settled in Sri Lanka. New arrangements of Vedem Songs tell the story of the boys imprisoned in the Terezin Concentration Camp, while excerpts from Ludlow, my opera with librettist David Mason, show America’s tragic treatment of immigrants.
Classic poets Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats and Edna St. Vincent Millay are featured alongside contemporary poets Annie Finch, Dana Gioia, Jennifer Reeser, A.E. Stallings and Diane Thiel.
The performers are sopranos Nicole Cabell (Cardiff Singer of the World (2005, Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera), ALISA JORDHEIM (Opéra National de Paris, San Diego Opera), Maureen McKay (Metropolitan Opera, Komische Oper Berlin), PATRICE MICHAELS (creator of RBG in Song, Shanghai and Czech National Symphonies), YUNGEE RHIE (Oregon Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center); mezzo-soprano KATIE HANNIGAN (Merola Opera, Rochester Philharmonic); GRAMMY Award-winner baritone DANIEL BELCHER (The Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Versailles, Houston Grand Opera); violinist TARN TRAVERS (Dal Niente, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra); soprano saxophone MICHAEL COUPER (San Diego and Modesto Symphonies); and collaborative pianists CHOEUN LEE (Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood Music Center), TZE-WEN (Julia) LIN (The Hochstein School and Cascadia Concert Opera), ANDREW ROSENBLUM (second prize winner at the 2017 Prague International and 2018 International Bach Competition Leipzig), and LORI LAITMAN.
The cover portrait, by celebrated artist PAUL WYSE, was commissioned for this CD.
Gramophone praised her most recent release as “eminently singable” with “wide appeal…[and] humour aplenty” and musicologist John Michael Cooper wrote “Laitman provides some of the most ravishingly beautiful music that I know in the repertoire.”
The CD can be pre-ordered on Amazon here.