Houston New Arts Movement founder and composer-pianist Adam Vincent Clay and soprano-vocal professor Frances Fenton will present an evening of songs and piano works that explore themes of being an outsider/seeking transcendence, and journeying within to make sense of the world as an artist.

Throughout history artists have historically found their voice in opposition, or at least in contrast to the world they live in. This concert explores the works of these artists in a unique pairing of songs and solo piano music. The evening will feature a number of songs from Mahler’s Ruckert-Lieder. These songs evoke a deep sense of longing for meaning and dissolution with the banality of the world and its values.

Clay’s extended song cycle, Rhapsody de Profundis, compiles texts in extreme contrast (Edgar Allan Poe, John Ashbery, and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II)), to reflect on broad and lofty themes of good and evil, trauma, confusion, the selling of art and how that can demean it to a commodity, as well as transcendence and desire for depth.