"'Jeder Mensch' was the first song cycle that Kate Lindsey commissioned from me, in 2011. It was born out of an obsession that Kate and I have with the figure of Alma Mahler. This woman, who led such a fascinating life, left us with diaries that Kate and I pored over to find the texts for this song cycle. In them she sings of her firm system of beliefs that the eternal source of all strength is “in nature, in the earth, in people who don’t hesitate to cast away their existence for the sake of an...