"Kolmanskop is a ghost town, located in a desert near the coast of Namibia. A diamond mining settlement until its abandonment in the 1950's, the surrounding sands have filled the homes. The first time I came across pictures of Kolmanskop, I was awestruck by the beauty and strangeness of the place. The photographs looked like surrealist art, with mountains of sand, sometimes to the tops of doorways and roofs, inundating ornate colonial houses.

In 2014, I was awarded the W.K. Rose Fellowship to go to Kolmanskop and compose a piece based on that setting. I wanted to represent more than just the visual elements of Kolmanskop. I tried to depict the idea of decay as the sand fills the houses, the sense of loss and nostalgia as the structures fade away, and the passage of time. The whole town is a bit like an hourglass--the more time that passes, the higher the sand becomes. I found a violin in one of the houses behind a glass case, apparently made by a violin-maker in Kolmanskop at the turn of the century. It was strange to know that in these eerily silent buildings there had once been music, and I decided to represent that with a recurring offstage violin solo. As the violin plays, it is often hidden by walls of sound, struggling to be heard above the orchestra."

Blooming in the Long Dark Winter's Night is inspired by a French symbolist poetry, "Correspondences," which is from the volume of Les Fleurs du mal, by French poet Charles Pierre Baudelaire. The music devotes on its expression of the fragrance, coloration, brightness, and darkness of the poem. Its sensation constructs a utopian world of imagination.

Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, LA, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). Her music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals and hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan's compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis. She has also completed an appointment as postdoctoral research associate in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is an assistant professor of music at Tulane University's Newcomb Department of Music, and serves as a board member of the Musical Arts Society of New Orleans (MASNO), Composers Now and New Music USA.

Bryan’s work has been presented in a wide range of venues, including Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, The Stone, La MaMa Experimental Theatre, National Gallery of Art, Blue Note Jazz Club and Ojai Music Festival. Upcoming commissions include compositions for the Jacksonville Symphony, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Pi, and collaborations with writers Sharan Strange and Ashon Crawley.