Out Cold

Composed by Phil Kline
with Theo Bleckmann and ACME

Out Cold will be an evening length song cycle for vocalist Theo Bleckmann and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME.)

There are two historical models in mind. One is Schubert, the other is Sinatra. The title refers to Winterreise, specifically the itinerary. The singer, rejected in love, journeys into a frozen landscape, full of painful memories, visions and strange forebodings. He finds neither oblivion nor redemption, but an ambiguous nether world in which one can only remember, forget and survive. It’s a surprisingly modern situation. As Samuel Beckett says in The Unnamable, “you must go on, I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

Out Cold will present the state of being lost or without bearings as a spiritual path, tracing the journey of those who go beyond signposts, without social approval and, indeed, those scorned by society and bereft of love.

A similar state of mind is found in Only the Lonely, the height of Frank Sinatra’s collaborations with Nelson Riddle. Here the widening gyre of Sehnsucht is described in a series of ballads, blues and torch songs, The Winter Journey as pub crawl, set in a dream lounge of orchestral sophistication and cool.

Musically, Out Cold will involve varied interaction between Theo and the members of ACME (string quartet, piano, percussion and winds), with songs for voice and differing combinations of instruments, along with interludes for instrumental groups without voice. In addition to Schubert and Riddle/Sinatra, there will also be side-references to classic songs that occupy parallel emotional space, marking an historical continuum of blue.

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