Album Notes

September 5, 2006 - Oxingale Records releases Après Moi, le Déluge around the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The debut full length album of new music by composer Luna Pearl Woolf includes two world premiere recordings: Aprés Moi, Le Déluge a concerto for cello and a cappella choir recorded live by trail-blazing cellist Matt Haimovitz and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Concert Choir conducted by Beverly Taylor, and the "operatorio," Orpheus on Sappho's Shore, performed by soprano Julieanne Klein, tenor Michiel Schrey and the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, conducted by Véronique Lacroix.

Called "the first major work of classical music to commemorate the flooding of New Orleans" (Arts Journal), Aprés Moi, Le Déluge is a post-Katrina lament on a new text by MacArthur-winning poet Eleanor Wilner who also wrote the libretto for the Orpheus on Sappho's Shore.

A portion of each album sale will benefit the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund.


The music of composer Luna Pearl Woolf (1973-) has been enthusiastically received across North America and Europe. Noted for her lyricism and wit, Woolf was recently highlighted as a composer and producer on NPR’s All Things Considered and has been featured in the “global hit” segment of PRI’s The World. Recent premieres include two works with a focus on recent events: Après Moi, le Déluge, called “the first major work of classical music to commemorate the flooding of New Orleans” (Arts Journal), was premiered in April 2006; and After the Wave, an orchestral response to the 2004 tsunami devastation, commissioned by the Greenwood Music School, premiered in August 2005. Upcoming recordings include a new work for soprano, cello and piano, commissioned by Lisa Delan for release on the Pentatone label, and I am a Fish for soprano and string quartet, commissioned by Jama Jandrokovic and premiered at New York’s Alice Tully Hall. Other recent commissions come from cellist Matt Haimovitz, pianist Katherine Jacobson and flautist Eugenia Zukerman, among others.

Woolf graduated summa cum laude in composition from Harvard University in 1996, and also studied at Oberlin College and Conservatory. In 2002, she earned her MA from Smith College. Woolf’s principal composition teachers have been Mario Davidovsky, Augusta Read Thomas, Lewis Spratlan and Don Wheelock. Woolf was awarded the Ellen Taafe Zwilich Prize from the IAWM, the John Greene Scholarship and John Knowles Paine Fellowship from Harvard University, and the Settie Lehman Fatman Prize from Smith College. Born and raised in Western Massachusetts, Woolf now makes her home in Montreal.