Great Camelot: 3 Songs for Tenor and Piano

Commissioned by Lynx Project for its 2017 Autism Advocacy Project which sets the words of four individuals with autism to music in newly commissioned art songs. It received its premiere performance by tenor Steven Humes and pianist Florence Mak on October 27, 2017 at the Mason Middle School in Mason, Ohio, and October 28, 2017 at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sameer Dahar is a young, autistic man who is primarily non-verbal, but communicates by pointing to letters on a board in a process called the Rapid Prompting Method. Using this method, Sameer created beautiful poems that inspired composer Juliana Hall to create a song cycle for tenor and piano based on Sameer’s work. The texts of these songs possess mystery and deeply beautiful images, as imagined through Sameer’s experience of living with autism. Duration: 6:00