Deadmall Ballads - Hilliard and Boresi

Lyric Fest Movie Now Streaming On Demand

Deadmall Ballads – a seriocomic song cycle about the life cycle of the American shopping mall. Offered in a new vision with video antics by Lyric Fest, this song-movie features the brilliant score / libretto of Hilliard and Boresi, brought to full hilarity and poignance by the artist who inspired the work, Jennifer Aylmer. Deadmall Ballads was originally premiered by LF in 2022 by Jennifer Aylmer and Laura Ward and was then studio recorded for our movie.

“[With] original, bluesy-driven penetrating music… composed by Peter Hilliard with idiosyncratic words by Matt Boresi… Deadmall Ballads has a clear story arc built around nine colorful songs about a dying shopping mall. The listener is taken on a journey not unlike Dante’s Inferno."

-D.C. Metro Theatre Arts

What audiences are saying about Lyric Fest

“It's much more than just a concert. It's the feeling of being alive.”

Raehann Bryce- Davis,  Photo: Donato Valentino

“You are at the center of the world where music, poetry, and thought come together. You are inches away from the art, and there's no other group that is giving you that kind of emotional immediacy.”

Lyric Fest is a place to experience the unique power of the human voice in song. We bring together great singers, composers, history, biography, and humor. Here we tell our stories in song.

Have A Look At Our

2024-2025 Season

2024-2025 Season

September

Play a Simple Melody

The Historic Songs of Tin Pan Alley

28 & 29

November

Nevertheless, She Sang

Women Composers, Women Poets

16 & 17

April

Everything Old is New Again

Antique songs in modern garb

5 & 6

Here's What's Happening Right Now

Urban living in the best and worst of times

The Soul of the City

“I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.”  - Michelangelo

“City life is millions of people being lonely together.”  - Henry David Thorough

In this gritty, but surprisingly poetic program, Lyric Fest explores both the energy and underbelly of life in the city. Join us for song, verse, and a reflection on how we experience life in urban community. With Danielle Talamantes, Clara Osowski, Aaron Crouch, Jesse Blumberg, and Laura Ward, piano. Featuring the world premiere of Lyric Fest's latest commission, "The Soul of the City - Preludes of T.S. Eliot", by Nicholas White. And more songs and poems by: Chris DeBlasio, Elizabeth Bishop, John Musto, Langston Hughes, Gabriel Kahane, David Sisco, Barbara Worton, Daron Hagen, Albert Roussel, René Dommage, James Laughlin, Claude Debussy, François Villon, Roger Quilter, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Ives, Matthew Arnold, Georgy Sviridov, Alexander Blok, Ricky Ian Gordon, Frank O’Hara, Elliot Carter, Robert Frost, Francis Poulenc, Guillaume Apollinaire, William Walton, Charles Morris, Erik Korngold, Hans Kaltneker, Wintter Watts, Sara Teasdale…
Where
When
Ethel L. Sayre Hall, Opera Delaware, in Wilmington, DE
February 22, 2025 @ 3:00 pm
The First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia
February 23, 2025 @ 3:00 pm