July 3rd, 2009
Bourland choral music: Alarcon Madrigals Bk3 (2007)
Because Vox Femina so loved “Both page and pen” and its erotic imagery, I decided to turn up the erotic flame just a tad in Alarcon Madrigals, Book 3. Commissioned again by Vox Femina, this set was written in Hawaii and you can find diary entries for working on the piece within this blog. You’ll hear some country twang in “Like a crazed flower,” and a reference to the final number of book 1 (”I learned Spanish from my grandma…”) closes Book 3, and bookends the set of three books.
Presently (July 2009) I am finishing a new set of madrigals for Vox based on the poetry of Eloise Klein Healy that turns up the erotic flame even higher.
MP3: Play audio file (alarmad3.0.mp3)
Alarcon Madrigals, Book 3 (2007)
1. Body in flames
2. Lamentario
3. Like a crazed flower
4. Face and heart
5. Guardian angel
Music: Roger Bourland
Poetry: Francisco X Alarcon
Iris Levine conducts Vox Femina -LA
Published by Yelton Rhodes Music – Los Angeles



In “Garden Abstract” I figured out how to weave voices together in a better harmonic way, making it easier to sing. The piece was premiered on a graduate composers concert at the New England Conservatory in 1977 and my colleagues actually liked it. The faculty liked it by choosing for performance at the commencement, the performance you hear here. The women singing it are all opera divas and brought their skill to each interwoven line. They were ON for this performance.

