Works
Songwriter Dave Hall Works Songs of Brooklyn Songs of Boyhood Darkened City
Songs of Brooklyn
Words & Music
Like so many Americans, part of Dave's family’s story takes place in Brooklyn. When Dave first moved to the same neighborhood where his great-grandparents met, he felt the presence of his ancestors as he walked the same streets they did, shopped in the same ethnic markets, and met his own life mate there. In so many ways Brooklyn's history is America’s history, and Songs of Brooklyn, a work for voice, piano and cello, traces the life of the borough from the 16th through the 21st century. It touchingly captures the sense of time and change, arrival and departure and the vibrancy of the people who live there.
Darkened City
Words & Music
New York City in the first years of the 21st century is a city of contrasts: between the rich and the poor, the dark and the light, the powerful and the powerless. It’s a city full of eager vitality and at the same time there are corners of it where people struggle to survive. Darkened City, a metaphorical tale of one winter night in present day New York, is a series of portraits of several New Yorkers, ones I’ve encountered personally, or read or heard about. Scored for voice, guitar, cello, bass and middle eastern percussion, Darkened City is part rock, part classical, and part spoken word.
Overture
Walking The Rails
The Stick
There's A Mill
Standing In Water
He
Member Of The Team
Parents, Monsters And God
Lullaby / Walking The Rails
Greenwood
Beards And Beer
Atlantic Avenue
Songs of Boyhood
Words & Music
Upon returning to live near the place where he grew up, Dave was inspired to write a series of poems based on remembered experiences from his childhood, as well as various imagined scenarios he thought common to all boys. The poems, set to music for string quartet, tenderly capture many aspects of boyhood. This song cycle gently traces an arc from early childhood, through growing into a man, to growing old.
Mermaid Parade
Towers
Bridges
Weeksville
Battle Of Brooklyn
Gowanus
So Many Streets
Watchman
City of Light
Far be it from me
The Egg
Money
His son her daughter
Concert Music
Musical Theater
Is It My House? / The Clock Song
Again
Selfish Shellfish
Llamas In Pajamas
Angela’s Flying Bed
Music/lyrics, book (co-writer)
An original story about an over-scheduled little girl who is so frustrated by her harried and inattentive parents’ constant moves to bigger and bigger houses that she decides to never get out of bed again. Her parents consult a specialist who prescribes a new bed, and it turns out the new bed flies. Angela and her wise-cracking bed travel around the world, meeting many exotic creatures and learning lessons along the way.
Humphrey's Song
Angela's
Flying Bed
He's An Artist / Look Lady
It's All Free
Ooh, Me Loves To Eat
The Giant's Become A Bum
Jack And The Beanstalk
Music/lyrics, book (co-writer)
This version of the classic children's story is set in Brooklyn, where Jack is an artist who paints on cows. This entertaining all-ages show takes a freewheeling look at wealth and materialism.
Just Being Me
My Pretty Daughter
Pretty Thing
Tell Me Your Name
What Do You Do?
Rumpelstiltskin
Music/lyrics, book (co-writer)
This version of the well-loved fairy tale is set in Appalachia, replete with an Elvis-like king, a barber shop quartet, blue grass-tinged tunes and Prince!
Theater
Concert Music
Musical Theater
'Round Midlife
Music/lyrics/book (co-writer)
'Round Midlife is a musical that Dave Hall co-wrote with friends David Brown and Lydia Gaston. It’s an autobiographical story of three crazy performing artists at midlife.
I Had a Hunch
Three Little Words
Getting Home
Music/lyrics/book
Dave's very first musical, written shortly after graduating from The Manhattan School of Music, was performed in a vacant lot on the Lower East Side of NYC. It told the story of a group of homesteaders (folks who take over and rehabilitate abandoned buildings) and was perfomed by residents of the neighborhood.
Ancram Suite
Words & Music
A short cycle of songs inspired by the small town of Ancram NY where Hall spends a lot of time. The songs trace the cycle of the seasons and the events in an agricultual town. Written for voice, cello, piano and guitar.
The Calamus Poems (Walt Whitman)
Music
Commissioned by the Whitman Project, Dave set a number of Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems for voice and guitar.
Arabs
Words & Music
As a reaction to the events of 9/11, Dave composed a three-movement work for chamber chorus. For text, Dave utilized Arab contributions to civilization; texts of phone calls he fielded when he volunteered at an Arab-American social service agency just after the event; names of famous Arab-Americans.
Voices From Guantanamo
Incidental Music
Hall wrote the incidental and underscoring music for the Off-Broadway play, which was based on poems written by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.
As You Like It
Much Ado About Nothing
Music
Dave wrote the music and played the characters who sang the songs in each of these Shakespeare comedies produced by the Brave New World Theater Company
Richard Hoehler's Working Class & Human Resources
Incidental Music
Dave wrote original incidental music for Hoehler's Working Class, and songs from the CDs Playin' The Man and Places were adapted for Human Resources.
Theater
Where I Want To Stay
Like He Understood
Pressing
Bluegrass At The Wayside Inn
Picking
BLUEGRASS AT THE
WAYSIDE INN
Good Arabs
One Day
All Good Things
Opening Music
Circling Music
Soccer Music
Guard Music
For My Father
Angela's
Flying Bed
