New EP Release: Birdsongs & À Quoi Bon Dire

November 7, 2026

A song cycle and bonus song by Emerson Eads are now available on all major streaming platforms. They’re performed by Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty members David Dillard (baritone), Yuko Kato (piano), and Abbie Eads (cello).

À Quoi Bon Dire, written for David Dillard, sets Charlotte Mew’s poem of the same name. Seventeen years after the beloved’s death, the speaker still addresses them as if they were near. The world may believe the beloved is gone and the speaker has grown old, but to each other they remain as close and as young as ever. It’s a quiet testament to a love that neither time nor death can touch.

Birdsongs sets poems written by children imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp during the Holocaust. Composed as a birthday gift for Abbie Eads, the cycle features an obbligato cello line that winds through the voice and piano. It’s a fragile, luminous presence, much like the hope that springs from the children’s own words

The recording was engineered by Chris Walczak, Chris Butler, and Dick Kelley, and mixed and edited by Daniel Stein. The album art is by Ukrainian-Alaskan artist Igor Pasternak.

Music is published by North Star, and is available here: