"Denial” and "Anger" are the first and second movements in Michael Leonhart's "The Normyn Suite #1: (Soundtrack to the Five Stages of Grieving)”, which is both a requiem and celebration, inspired by the life and death of Leonhart’s 15-year-old dog, a female mini dachshund named Normyn.
Suite #1 first appeared on the Michael Leonhart Orchestra 2022 album The Normyn Suites (Sunnyside Records) and was inspired by "The Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle", a model introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. "The Five Stages of Grief" is a critically acclaimed study on how humans handle loss. For Leonhart's suite in five parts, he expands the MLO’s live performance palette of brass, woodwinds and strings to include choir and found percussion over gritty drum breaks from Nick Movshon. Leonhart shares, “I wanted “Denial” and “Anger” to have an emotional tension and raw quality, almost a whiplash effect..."
