Could earlier generations have imagined the time we live in, a time of unprecedented intimacy with strangers, a time when we can click our way through other people’s lives with little or no comprehension of what we see?

I turn away, turn away from gravity, and I see so much I have never seen before.

Seven Stories is an epic for our time. A stuffed animal falls from an apartment window. As she falls, she glimpses figures in the passing windows and struggles to create stories from what she sees.

Here is a strange creature, twisted in a chair. Two heads, many limbs, wrapped round and round.

Dante described climbing seven stories of purgatory in order to get to paradise in his epic for the Middle Ages. The narrator of this Seven Stories achieves a contemporary vision of paradise, but through a precipitous descent.

a great wall rises before me, rises majestically up to the clouds. A great, many-windowed wall.

Soprano, 2 flutes (2nd dbl alto), vibe/glock, piano, string quartet.

ORDER SEVEN STORIES:

• score and parts: American Composers Editions