Ellen Mandel: Home
NPR: All Things Considered
A WIND HAS BLOWN THE RAIN AWAY:
"the playful poetry of e.e. cummings set to music by New York composer Ellen Mandel and sung beautifully by Cincinnati baritone and actor Todd Almond.
I wish I could give this CD to every poetry lover I know"
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NEW YORK TIMES: MARGO JEFFERSON
Mandel's E.E. Cummings songs: "Ardent and spiky---refreshingly organic."
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“This composer’s music has been remarkable for consistent invention, compositional resource, and apt theatricality. So attention should be paid as she branches out now with musical settings of e.e. cummings poems." Kerner, Village Voice
A WIND HAS BLOWN THE RAIN AWAY is the collective title for 15 songs by the freshly inventive and emotionally on-target composer, Ellen Mandel, from poems by e.e. cummings. Todd Almond sings them, with the composer at the piano.” Kerner, Village Voice
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ELLEN MANDEL and extraordinary tenor TODD ALMOND have a new CD: THE FIRST OF ALL MY DREAMS. Almond sings Mandel’s settings of poems by E.E. Cummings, Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats and others, plus jazz songs with both music and lyrics by Mandel.
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THIS FALL: Premieres of new songs by ELLEN MANDEL set to poems by Wallace Stevens, Ogden Nash, and e.e. cummings at Cornelia Street Cafe, NYC! Alexandra Skendrou sings MANDEL's setting of E.E. Cummings A WIND HAS BLOWN THE RAIN AWAY in SONGS FOR THE RAIN AND THE CLOUDS at St. Marks Church in the Bowery NYC
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SPRING & SUMMER: Music by ELLEN MANDEL featured in THE BRASS BUTTERFLY at the Wild Project, NYC and in HEARTBREAK HOUSE and ANNE OF GREEN GABLES at the Peterborough Players!
LOVE'S LABOURS LOST, with songs by ELLEN MANDEL, a hit at the JUILLIARD SCHOOL!
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CINDY REILLY, a musical version of Cinderella, music by Ellen Mandel, book and lyrics by Kaikkonen and Swartz, a smash hit at the Peterborough Players (NH): "Cindy Reilly has all the quality of a Broadway musical...a brilliant update of the old classic...THE MUSICAL NUMBERS ARE ASTOUNDING, WITH THE MUSIC WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ELLEN MANDEL. Mrs Scrubb sings a hilarious and literally show-stopping symphony of a spell "Alacazabra" ...CINDY REILLY IS A HIT.
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Ellen Mandel has written music for over fifty plays, and has released three CDs, A WIND HAS BLOWN THE RAIN AWAY, fifteen of her E.E. Cummings songs sung by Todd Almond, THE FIRST OF ALL MY DREAMS, Almond sings Mandel’s settings of poems by E.E. Cummings, Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats and others, plus jazz songs with both music and lyrics by Mandel, and EVERY PLAY'S AN OPERA, collected theatre music.
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CD's now available at cdbaby.com, and at St Mark's Bookstore (NYC), Politics and Prose (Wash DC) and Toadstool Bookshop (Peterborough NH), or directly from Ellen Mandel through this website!