Consolation by Samn Johnson & Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart

Consolation is a song cycle composed by Samn Johnson for vocalist Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart, setting Latin poetry from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. It features layers of Tis’s voice accompanied by Samn’s electronics and instrumental recordings.

Boethius wrote the Consolation in 524 AD while awaiting execution after his political downfall. He writes that he is visited in prison by an allegorical, feminine personification of Philosophy, who consoles him despite the cruelty of his fate. Through their imagined dialogue, it is apparent that both characters are in fact himself, both male and female, both free and captive, facing questions about his own life choices: money, fame, power? Did I have them? Did they make me happy? How can evil go unpunished in a just cosmos? How can one come to know what is truly good?

Consolation—the album—has been described by composer and music critic Alex Temple as “wildly polystylistic,” Tis’s voice, the backbone of the album, is pushed to virtuosic limits of range and timbre, spanning over four octaves with an astonishing array of colors and tuning systems. Samn's electronic orchestra deploys echoes of Renaissance polyphony alongside 808 kick drums and synthesizers, flashes of romanticism, and washes of ambience.

Samn Johnson (he/they) is a composer and producer, working in an eclectic style integrating ethereal electronics with contemporary classical composition and historical languages and music. He currently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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