Evan L. SNYDER
COMPOSER // LIBRETTIST // TENOR
Evan L. Snyder
LARGE ENSEMBLE WORKS
CONCERTO FOR AUDIENCE: ARIA
A collaborative work conceived by flutist James Brinkmann, this work features three movements by three different composers (Evan L. Snyder, Spencer Arias, and Elena Specht). Each movement includes a participatory element, some way in which the audience actively makes music with the orchestra. Evan’s movement, Aria, features a tune which the audience sings in call-and-response with the orchestra, with ever-increasing levels of overlap: until the response catches up with the call and the audience and orchestra perform as one. (c. 4')
2020 / Orchestra (2.2.2.2 / 4.2.3.1 / timp. 2 perc / str)
Before the ocean was
This tone poem for string orchestra was conceived in response to Frank Justus Miller’s translation of the opening 25 lines of Ovid’s Metamorphosis: Ovid’s telling of the creation of the world. Spanning from simplistic romantic melody to dense, chaotic-sounding micropolyphony, the world explores the shaping of the cosmos into the world we now know. (c. 7’)
2021 / Large String Orchestra (12.12.10.10.8.)
three murders
Three Murders is a suite of three of the seven orchestral interludes from the opera, A Capacity for Evil. The story of the opera follows Daniel, a famed 1930s private eye, who, with help from his partner Doyle and his fiancée Angelica, works to
unravel a series of grisly murders all occurring on New Years Eve. These murders, engineered by an unknown murderer after a passage of the bible, known as “The Temptations of Christ,” are captured in these three interludes—which echo both the victim’s experience and the murderer’s own warped interpretation of the passage. (c. 12')
2018 / Orchestra (2.2.2.2. / 2.2.2.1. / timp. 2 perc. hp. pno / str)
WHY DO WE RIDE?
Commissioned for Chicago Opera Theater’s 2019 Opera For All program, this flexibly-voiced choral work features a melody, along with optional alto and baritone harmony parts. Intended for students grades 2-8, the work deals with themes of friendship, difference, and overcoming adversity through togetherness. (c. 3')
2019 / Children's Choir & Piano