Todd Almond and Ellen Mandel in concert

Todd Almond and Ellen Mandel celebrate the release of their new CD the first of all my dreams, Todd singing Ellen’s new songs to poems by ee Cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney, Daniel Pociernicki, and Ellen Mandel.

Alan Cheuse of All Things Considered calls the Mandel/Almond/Cummings blend “a striking collaboration.” “Ardent and spiky…refreshingly organic,” writes Margo Jefferson of the NY Times. Marie J Kilker, of TotalTheatre.com called the first of all my dreams “Just great!”

the first of all my dreams includes three new Cummings songs: “the first of all my dreams,” “this is the garden” and “stinging gold,” plus settings of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ well known poem “God’s Grandeur,” “Sleep” and “Human Beings Suffer” with lyrics by Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, and two modern spirituals, “Inside My Heart,” lyrics by Daniel Pociernicki, and “Traveler’s Prayer,” with lyrics by Ellen that she translated from the traditional Hebrew prayer.

Todd and Ellen also perform songs from a wind has blown the rain away, Mandel’s Cummings songcycle plus several of her jazz/pop songs.