Orpheus enchants and hypnotizes the world, all its sentient creatures, with his music. In this case, his clarinet. He is like a pied piper. One day, while strolling along, playing, he sees a vision, a symphony in yellow...Euridice. He is transfixed by her. It is love at first sight, transformative and exhilarating. She is equally smitten and they unite. there is a giddiness and playfulness to their union, as well as a charged eroticism. They dance. They set up home together. Orpheus feels part of the world in a way in which he never has...seeing the oneness of everything and feeling a part of it all.

One day, Euridice notices, while playing with her friends, the muses, a strange absence of her usual energy. She keeps trying, but is thwarted by fatigue. A kind of virus seems to be robbing her of her life force. At first she pushes it aside, but quickly, as it overtakes her, it becomes too apparent. Orpheus is despondent, desperate. She begins to sleep all the time and he tries to wake her, cheer her, coax her from her sleep, but her listlessness becomes who she is. She dies by simply fading out of Orpheus' life. He cannot live without her.

He goes to the underworld, to beg the powers that be to let him have her back. At their behest, he plays everything he knows in an effort to convince them. They agree, but with one condition. He must journey back to the world and never look back. He has to trust that she is behind him, though he cannot see her, until they both cross the threshold to the outer world. On the journey, Eurdice is unaware of the condition and believes that he is ignoring her. She dogs and cajoles him, a Euridice he has never known, and, in a moment of weakness, he turns around to assure her. She disappears.

Alone again, he continues to play music, but it becomes so dark and disjointed, ugly, so that instead of charming the creatures he depresses them, casts them into darkness, and eventually, they attack him. They tear him to pieces. Parts of his body are scattered everywhere. His head is tossed into the river, and it is said, that emanating from the floating head of Orpheus, is all of the world's music.

I first met Todd Palmer some years ago at a Christmas party given by Neal Goren, the pianist, coach and conductor. I am not sure why he started showing up at my performances, but it seemed wherever I was doing something, Todd showed up...and it of course made me really like him!

One day, he said he would like to commission a piece from me. Because many of the performances he came to were vocal, he thought it would be good to have a Clarinet, Piano and Voice piece. I started musing on what it coulde be.

Hidden somewhere in my subconscious...an old obsession with the "Orpheus and Euridice" myth was boiling to the surface. When I was little, one of the foreign films my sister took me to was the beutiful "Black Orpheus". What could I have really understood in that story...but something lingered.

One night, at 4 in the morning, I awoke and wrote the entire text. It seemed I suddenly had a deep identification with Orpheus...only my Euridice was not bitten by a snake, but robbed slowly by an incurable virus. Somehow, in my mind's eye and ear, I was Todd as the "Orpheus" playing his "Pipe" instead of a lute or a lyre. Euridice was both herself and the storyteller...the notes were his and the pianist's, and the words were hers.

We were lucky to try a version of the piece out at Cooper Union. Howard Stokar who ran the Cooper Arts series asked me to do the piece in October of 2001. Todd played, Elizabeth Farnum sang, Scott Dunn played the piano and Ted Sperling directed it.

Sometime after that I was a guest of Jane Moss's at Lincoln Center for the Schubert "Winterreise" that Simon Keenlyside sang and Trisha Brown choreographed. I was so impressed with the way the cycle was done. I was especially impressed with the way Simon actually DANCED in the piece as well as sang. I longed to do the piece this way, and I approached Jane Moss and Jon Nakagawa...who lovingly allowed me to make this dream a reality. I watched a piece by a brilliant choreographer named Doug Varone...a piece he called "The Bottomlands." I asked him if he would direct and choreograph this version of "Orpheus and Euridice" at Lincoln Center. Doug, Todd and I all decided where we thought the piece might bear a bit of expansion and I went to work. This version of the piece had its world premiere with the soprano Elizabeth Futral, Todd on clarinet, and pianist Melvin Chin, as well as Doug's whole dance company, on October 5th, 7th and 8th, 2005, as part of the Lincoln Center "New Visions" series.

Gordon has three sisters; one of them, Susan Gordon Lydon, became a founding editor of Rolling Stone. Susan would tuck Ricky into bed at night by reading poems aloud, sparking his lifelong love of poetry. Gordon has set many poems to music, including works by Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Jean Valentine, among others. He set several poems from What the Living Do, Marie Howe's moving collection detailing her brother's death from AIDS.

Gordon's work is available on several recordings. Audra McDonald, the sensational young theatrical diva, recorded several of his songs for her debut CD, Way Back to Paradise (1998). McDonald also appears on Bright Eyed Joy (2001), an impressive collection devoted to Gordon's songs, which features as well Dawn Upshaw, Adam Guettel, Theresa McCarthy, and other performers.

In 1996 Futral was invited to the Rossini Opera Festival to sing the title role in the first production of Rossini's Matilde di Shabran since 1821. Later that year, she sang the role of Catherine in Meyerbeer's L'étoile du nord at the Wexford Festival.

In September 1998, she created the role of Stella in the world premiere of André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire for the San Francisco Opera. In February 2001, she debuted with the Los Angeles Opera as Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Other roles she has sung for the Los Angeles Opera include Sophie in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata.

On January 8, 1999, Futral made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. In 2003, she sang the role of Princess Eudoxie in the Met's first performances of Halévy’s La Juive since 1936. She returned to the Met in December 2006 to star opposite Plácido Domingo and Paul Groves in the world premiere of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor.

The soprano's recordings include Six Characters in Search of an Author, L'étoile du nord, A Streetcar Named Desire, Otello (of Rossini), Lucia di Lammermoor (in English translation), Of Mice and Men (of Floyd), Zelmira, Orpheus & Euridice (of Gordon), as well as "Sweethearts" (on Newport Classic).

Mr. Palmer is in great demand as a chamber music performer and has appeared at many American and International music festivals as well as touring with Musicians from Marlboro and Spoleto Chamber Music USA. He has collaborated with the Brentano, Borromeo, Crion and St. Lawrence quartets as well as being the clarinetist of choice in Schubert's Shepherd on die Rock with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Roberta Peters and Dawn Upshaw.

Mr. Palmer has had a close association with composer Osvaldo Golijov since 1997 and was named editor-in-chief of his Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for publication. In addition to Mr. Golijov, Mr. Palmer has also worked directly with composers Richard Rodney Bennett, Kenji Bunch, John Corigliano, Aaron JayKernss, Oliver Knussen, Steven Mackey, Stephen Prutsman, Kevin Puts, Ned Rorem, George Tsontakis, and Ricky Ian Gordon, who composed the monodrama Orpheus and Euridice for Mr. Palmer which was premiered in New York City at the Lincoln Center.

His redording of chamber music by Osvaldo Golijov with the St. Lawrence Quarter for EMI Classics (Yiddishbbuk) was one of the top-selling recordings of 2002 and received two Grammy Award nominations.

From its first concerts at P.S. 122 in 1986, in repertory dances such as the propulsive Rise (1993) and Lux (2006), the site-specific Neither (2000) at the lower East Side Tenement Museum, Ricky Ian Gordon’s song cycle Orpheus and Euridice for Lincoln Center (2005), the emotionally charged Joseph Merrick: The Elephant Man (2006), and the multi-media Dense Terrain (2007), Doug Varone and Dancers has been singled out for its expansive choreographic vision, versatility, and technical prowess.

Varone and his company members are especially prized for their kinetic dexterity, musicality and acting instincts, and are sought after for their multi-discipline residency programs and intensive professional workshops. On tour, the company has performed in more than 100 cities in 45 states across the U.S. and in Europe, Asia, Canada, and South America. Stages include The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, San Francisco Performances, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Toronto’s Harbourfront, Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theater, the Venice Biennale, and the Tokyo, Bates and the American Dance Festivals.

Choreographic awards include two American Dance Festival Doris Duke Awards for New Work, and three from the National Dance Project. The company’s dances have been commissioned by such leading institutions as Jacob’s Pillow, the Joyce Theater, Whitebird (Portland, OR), the Carlsen Center (Overland Park, KS), the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts (College Park, MD), Bard’s SummerScape, and the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. Eleven New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies) have been awarded to the company’s dancers, designers, and to Varone himself.

In recent years the Company has created and performed works in partnership with producers, and opera and theater companies on new productions including Le Sacre du Printemps for the Metropolitan Opera (2003), the Aquila Theatre Company on H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (2005), and Minnesota Opera on the American premiere of Petitgirard’s Joseph Merrick: The Elephant Man (2006). Varone directed and choreographed these diverse productions.

Doug Varone and Dancers’ three-week intensive dance workshops are held at different universities around the country each year. On tour, the company’s residency programs redeploy the concepts, imagery, and techniques that propel its work to explore theories of creativity and innovation across disciplines and for people of all ages and backgrounds.

Activities for math, arts, literature, philosophy, early childhood, architecture, at risk youth and life sciences constituents reach out to new audiences and supporters in ways that directly relate to their lives and interests.