Sappho lived between 630 - 570 BC, approximately. She was acclaimed all around the Mediterranean as one of the greatest lyric poets of all time, and may well be the first woman artist to be widely recognized. Her lyric poetry, love songs, hymns and ceremonial works were collected into 13 volumes, and widely disseminated throughout the ancient world, remaining in circulation for a millennium following her death. Sadly, all that survives of her work today are a little over 100 disjointed fragments, and a scant handful of longer excerpts. Although she is now referred to as a poet, she was in fact more of a song-writer. All poetry in her time was sung, with the singer accompanying him or herself on the lyre. As a musician Sappho is credited with having invented the Mixolydian mode, which became one of the most emotionally charged scales for performance of both poetry and drama in the Hellenic traditions. GLIMPSES OF SAPPHO is an attempt to portray by implication what might have been Sappho’s life by treating these fragments as tiny windows that reveal fractured moments. Each germ of poetry is not only an artifact of the greater missing whole, it is also a “glimpse” of an emotional moment, or a thought, or a partial conversation, that suggests the larger life in which the moment was contained. It is as though a glass photographic plate was dropped to the ground, and one could only examine a portion of the resultant shards of image: one could not see the whole, but one might be able to surmise it. In her poetic fragments are thoughts and feelings of love, loss, children, nature, and inevitable decline, all of which are here sequenced so as to suggest a chronological arc. PAUL SCHWARTZ composer/piano Paul Schwartz is a musician whose work bridges the gaps between many of the disparate musical worlds of the 21st century. As a composer, conductor, pianist and producer, he is one of the rare individuals who is equally at home in the concert hall, the theater and the eclectic world of contemporary music: both acoustic and electronic. He is the creator of two internationally successful series of recordings: the ARIA series, and the STATE OF GRACE series. Both of these distinct collections of recordings have a passionate international following and have collectively sold over 650,000 copies worldwide. ARIA was nominated for a Grammy, and STATE OF GRACE III was the NAR Album of the Year for 2006. Music from these cds have been used frequently in film and television, from the 2006 Winter Olympics, to the tv shows SMALLVILLE, THE BLACK DONNELYS, and ALIAS, to films including THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and A MAN APART. SUSANNE ELMARK Soprano Susanne Elmark is an internationally known star of the opera house and the concert hall. She has appeared on the stages of the Royal Opera Copenhagen, Malmø Opera, Staatsoper München, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Opera Houses in Dublin, Innsbruck, Tel Aviv, Essen, Darmstadt and too many others to mention. Known as one of the great coloraturas of her generation, her signature roles are the Queen of the Night in ZAUBERFLöTE, and Zerbinetta in ARIADNE AUF NAXOS. Additionally she has taken on many difficult contemporary roles, notably LIFE WITH AN IDIOT by Schnittke for Opera Malmø.