The music begins with a string quartet’s tentative chords in quiet, Benjamin Britten-like swells. Then a relaxed, almost jazzy beat kicks in, and electronics add a background texture suggesting wind. A soprano starts to sing about her house on the sea in a low, pop-music register, then shifts into talking about “the stranger with the face of a man I loved.”
In its first few moments, Penelope — a contemporary song cycle based on Homer’s Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus’ wife — establishes itself as a mix of musical genres so fused it creates its own soundscape. The work by New York City composer Sarah Kirkland Snider will be performed at the Barre Opera House on Sunday, March 30, by TURNmusic, Vermont’s ensemble specializing in genre-busting chamber music, featuring soprano Mary Bonhag.
Vermonters may have last heard the piece in 2018, when Bonhag performed it with 11 TURNmusic players in two intimate venues, Zenbarn in Waterbury Center and the now-closed Rusty Nail in Stowe. This time, TURNmusic artistic director and conductor Anne Decker has chosen a larger space. She has also condensed the instrumentation to a string quartet: Mary Rowell and Brooke Quiggins on violin, Elizabeth Reid on viola, and John Dunlop on cello, plus bassist Nicholas Browne, Geoff Kim on guitar, percussionist Jane Boxall and Katie Semro contributing electronics via a laptop.
Decker, 50, who views Penelope as “a perfect gateway for people who don’t see themselves at a chamber music concert,” snagged the opera house to maximize audience capacity. (TURNmusic’s partnering venue, the Phoenix gallery and music hall in Waterbury, was too small for the occasion.)
Bonhag, cofounder and artistic director of the Calais-based classical music series Scrag Mountain Music, says the work warrants a bigger venue.
“It’s a big piece,” Bonhag, 39, said of the hourlong song cycle. “It has a lot of emotion and a lot of sound that can be tender and intimate and, at other times, really intense.”
Snider, 51, earned her master’s in composition at Yale School of Music. She has described her work as “somewhere between early Debussy and Joni Mitchell.” She has also written in a more traditional classical vein, including art songs that Bonhag performed at the Brooklyn Art Song Society’s annual New Voices Festival in New York City.
In 2007 and 2008, Snider worked with playwright Ellen McLaughlin on songs for the latter’s musical theater monodrama about the character of Penelope. The composer reconceived the work in 2009 as a song cycle set to her collaborator’s poetic lyrics.
Snider released Penelope on New Amsterdam Records, a label she founded with her friends Judd Greenstein and William Brittelle to bring music to the public that was considered so far off the classical trajectory no one else would publish it. The work became a hit. Its website describes it as “suspended somewhere between art song, indie rock, and chamber folk.”
New Amsterdam has been on Decker’s radar since she founded TURNmusic almost 11 years ago. The Vermont group’s mission is to push the boundaries of chamber and classical music, and “Sarah Snider was one of the first composers I found for this,” Decker said. TURNmusic’s inaugural program included two pieces by Greenstein, and the group recently brought Greenstein’s NOW Ensemble to the Flynn Space in Burlington for a concert and workshop with local composers.
Leaning into Penelope‘s theme of a woman grappling with loss and change, Decker will open Sunday’s program with arrangements for string quartet of songs by SZA, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande from the women-centric Netflix series “Bridgerton” and “Queen Charlotte.” The concert is also a fundraiser for Brook Street High School in Barre, a program of Capstone Community Action that helps pregnant and parenting women complete high school. Barre artist Arthur Zorn has donated four paintings for auction, and Sue Minter, who served as Capstone’s executive director from 2018 to 2024, will address the audience.
Bonhag, who sings plenty of new music but mainly in a classical vein, said she appreciates the chance to delve again into Snider’s genre-defying piece. Known for her jewellike tone and expressive phrasing, the soprano is refamiliarizing herself with aspects of singing less common to her repertoire, such as belting and lower-register projection. And, she added with a laugh, “It’s been really fun for me to explore my inner rocker — like, Who is Mary when fronting a band?”
This second time, Bonhag said, the piece feels “deeper and maybe more relatable and more true” — especially after the global COVID-19 experience. The singer likened the Odyssey story of loss and homecoming to the “grief” she felt during the pandemic from “experiencing something that’s so unfamiliar and returning home and having home be really different.”
“This music just stirs something in me,” Bonhag continued. “It’s about longing and aching, and it’s just very satisfying to sing. And it’s going to be really extraordinary in that space.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Epic Proportions | TURNmusic and soprano Mary Bonhag present the woman-centric, genre-defying song cycle Penelope“
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2025.
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