The Composer Is Dead

Today we attended the New York premiere of a very cool musical performance piece entitled The Composer Is Dead with music by Nathaniel Stookey and words by Lemony Snicket. It was performed by The Little Orchestra Society and narrated live by Lemony Snicket

Yes, Lemony Snicket. For those who don't know, Lemony Snicket (the author of those books about a series of unfortunate events) is, in real life, Daniel Handler (read more here).

The Composer Is Dead is essentially a very humorous story intertwined with a symphonic musical piece that details the investigation of the murder of a composer. Daniel Handler proved that not only is he an outstanding author and storyteller, but a darn fine performer as well.

My favorite narrative part was from the beginning:

'A composer thinks up melodies, hums tunes, thinks about how the orchestra will sound and writes down the notes. This is called composing. This time, however, the composer was not humming tunes or writing down notes. In fact, he wasn't even breathing. This is called decomposing.'

It will be out in a picture book with accompanying CD in 2009. Look for it.