Ecology —2001

Ecology was composed for the New York new music ensemble, Sequitur, for their cabaret on the subject of Power at Joe’s Pub in New York City. The text for this brief song is by American poet Tony Hoagland.

Program Notes

Tony Hoagland’s poem “Ecology” comes from his 1998 book Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of the American Academy of American Poets. Hoagland’s poems have a satiric edge, and in “Ecology” he addresses the inequalities in the academic hierarchy, where some are like little fish trapped by the bigger and gaudier of the species.

Reviews

…the program had a sense of humor that helped it to surf over the bitter edges. To a great extent, that humor came in the songs commissioned for the occasion. Robert Maggio’s setting of Tony Hoagland’s “Ecology,” a look at the cynicism of power, evoked both Weill and the more parodistic songs of Ray Davies, the principal songwriter in the Kinks.

Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, May 23, 2003