Album Notes

A WIND HAS BLOWN THE RAIN AWAY is a CD of 15 songs by Ellen Mandel to poems by the great American poet E.E. Cummings.

Margo Jefferson of the New York Times called Mandel's Cummings songs "ardent and spiky with meter and key changes that felt refreshingly organic." "A striking collaboration: the playful poetry of e.e. cummings set to music by New York composer Ellen Mandel and sung beautifully by Cincinnati tenor and actor Todd Almond," said NPR's Alan Cheuse on All Things Considered. "I wish I could give this CD to every poetry lover I know." .


E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962) upended modern poetry with his radical concepts. Also a painter, Cummings shaped and scattered his words on the page, to shock and delight his readers. His poems range from sweetly romantic to dark and hauntingly evocative.

ELLEN MANDEL has written music for dozens of plays from Shakespeare to Stoppard at New York City's Jean Cocteau Rep, where she is resident composer, and for Riverside Shakespeare, NYC, Peterborough Players, NH, Samuel Beckett Festival, Victoria, BC, Asolo Theater, FL, Arkansas Rep and many other theaters. Every Play's an Opera (Brite Records) is a collection of her theater music. She has also composed for dance, film, television, and leads her own jazz quintet. Leighton Kerner of the Village Voice has called Mandel's music "remarkable for consistent invention, compositional resource, and apt theatricality. "

TODD ALMOND, a Cincinnati Conservatory graduate, was named Best Actor twice at the city's annual Entertainment Awards: for his portrayal of Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and as Kemp in Vigil, and Best Supporting Actor for his Louis in Angels in America . Also a composer, Almond has released two solo CDs: Try To Hear, Try To Say, and Deep North Woods. The Cincinnati Post called his singing "exquisite." "Almond's got killer pipes," wrote the Cincinnati City Beat. "He brings raw emotion to each song he performs."