Huit Chansons de Fleurs

What’s in a name? While the title is French for “Eight Flower Songs,” the texts are all in English. The poems’ flowers metaphorically evoke fragrance, love and loss, life and death, rebirth and regrowth. Perhaps the texture and beauty of Gordon’s music are themselves French. The 20-minute song cycle draws on poems from Wordsworth to Dorothy Parker, as well as from contemporary poets including the composer himself.