Dark Imagining
RACHEL SCHUTZ, ANDREA CHRISTIE
COMPOSED BY JEFF MYERS
FOR YOUR
GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Best Contemporary Classical Composition
Jeff Myers: Poe Songs
“...Myers displays a deep understanding of the chosen texts through his compositions...."
— La Scena Musicale
ABOUT
LISTEN
New York composer Jeff Myers’ third album, Dark Imagining, weaves together vocal works that traverse beauty, darkness, and transformation. From the gothic world of Poe and Baudelaire to the quiet drama of Jennifer de Guzman and the radiant beauty of Hawaiian lore, soprano Rachel Schutz and pianist Andrea Christie bring Myers’ musical storytelling to life. Cellist Christopher Gross and clarinetist Ashleé Miller join for two of the Hawaiian pieces, adding vibrance and character to an album that celebrates the gamut of human experience.
ABOUT JEFF MYERS:
The music of American composer Jeff Myers (b.1977) has been called “Striking … and harmonically rich” by The New York Times and “brilliant and powerful” by The Classical Voice of New England. He was hailed as a "gifted young composer" by The New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini for the “engrossing” 2016 Fort Worth Opera staging of his opera Buried Alive. Vocal music has been central to Myers’s output, from his operas with librettists Quincy Long (Buried Alive, The Embalmer’s Daughter) and Royce Vavrek (The Hunger Art, Maren of Vardø), to collaborations with American Lyric Theater, Beth Morrison Projects, Ekmeles, mezzos Rachel Calloway (Requiem aeternam, Islands of Death) and Anna Laurenzo (The Embalmer’s Daughter, Boy), as well as poet Jennifer de Guzman (Boy, Advice to a Migraineure). This album’s featured soprano, Rachel Schutz, has been a constant collaborator, having performed and premiered several songs over the years since they met as faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Myers’s discography has been slowly growing over the last few years. His violin duo The Angry Birds of Kauai, commissioned by Hilary Hahn, appears on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores and is published by Boosey & Hawkes. His debut album, Requiem, with mezzo Rachel Calloway and JACK Quartet, was released on Innova Recordings in 2024, followed by his electronic album Goodnight on Neuma Records in 2025. Other works have appeared on albums by Miolina, Yang Jing, Laura Klock, and Music in the American Wild. His music has been performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Disney Concert Hall, Library of Congress, Darmstadt; festivals such as Tanglewood, Aspen, Acanthes, and Gaudeamus; and he has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fromm Foundation, BMI, ASCAP and others. A student of Grammy®-winning composers William Bolcom and Michael Daugherty, Myers holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. He lives in New York City, where he works as a freelance composer and music engraver.
