Composed by Erin C. Blake

Performed on November 4th, 2024

Ford-Crawford Hall, Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington, IN

Everything Must Go first came about earlier this year when I was walking alone around a mall I grew up going to, noticing how the landscape had changed in the years since I was a kid. Drawn to the desolation of small shops with seemingly no customers and empty storefronts that used to hold now-bankrupt corporate retailers, I began to formulate a story in my mind of a breakup brought about by a slow degradation that mirrors the decline of malls in America and, with them, the third place. Everything Must Go is a work of fiction that could be considered part of an imagined larger work, or not; this is a snapshot into the lives of characters that have a greater story, just out of frame.

Erin C. Blake, soprano

Leland Conrad, harp