Doot
for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and 10 instruments

Duration: 10:35

The Osvaldo Golijov/Dawn Upshaw Professional Training Ensemble; Maghan Stewart, soprano; Julie Miller, mezzo-soprano

Commissioned by Carnegie Hall

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I did not write Doot. It was written by my alter ego, Professor Monkeypants, who snuck into my studio one night and commandeered a stack of manuscript paper.

Professor Monkeypants was not always a producer of upbeat electronica. Early in his life, Professor Monkeypants was an intergalactic ethnomusicologist; he specialized in the music of planet Doot (pronounced as a sudden, high-pitched beep).

The "people" of planet Doot are a gentle, patient, sanguine folk by nature, but their world is changing. The young people no longer have time for traditional song and dance and merriment.

This saddens Professor Monkeypants, so he wrote a song about it.

Written for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and 10 instruments, Doot is about a world in crisis; it is about inexorable change. The text is drawn from old Doot, an ancient and untranslatable language. Though a handful of scholars still speak old Doot, its secrets may soon be lost … perhaps forever.