Nonesuch releases composer Jacob Cooper's label debut, Silver Threads, on April 28, 2014. The album comprises a six-song cycle performed by soprano Mellissa Hughes. Cooper wrote the first song, "Silver Threads," for Hughes in the winter of 2011, setting a haiku attributed to the famous Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō for voice and electronic track. To expand it into a full cycle (all for voice and track), he enlisted five other poets to write text that was inspired by the haiku: Greg Alan Brownderville, Tarfia Faizullah, Kristin Kelly, Dora Malech, and Zach Savich.
In explaining his use of electronic track on these songs, Cooper says that 19th Century "German lied was associated with the piano because it'd just had a huge surge of popularity, and there was one in every middle-class home-it was essentially a folk instrument at that time." He continues, "I feel like, in a way, the laptop is so prevalent now that it's a sort of contemporary folk instrument. The sounds it can create, which we hear all the time on the radio and elsewhere, are the folk sounds of today. So it seemed like the natural accompaniment for a song cycle."
Jacob Cooper's compositions and multimedia works have gained recognition in both North America and Europe, with performances by the JACK Quartet, the Calder Quartet, Ensemble ACJW, the NOW Ensemble, and the Minnesota Orchestra.
