David Felder's Les Quatre Temps Cardinaux, for soprano, bass, orchestra and electronics, is structured around the four stanzas of the eponymous poem by René Daumal (1908-1944). Daumal was a surrealistic poet, mystic and scholar of Sanskrit. Although his life was short, it was prodigious. As a teenager, and before he even knew the Surrealists themselves, he was already experimenting with quasi-Surrealistic writing techniques (and dangerous intoxicants): his early work is anarchic, hallucinatory and fascinated with death. David Felder has long been recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading international festivals for contemporary music, and earn continuing recognition through performance and commissioning programs. Felder's work has been broadly characterized by it's highly energetic profile, through it's frequent employment of technological extension and elaboration of musical materials (including his Crossfire video series, and the video/music collaboration Shamayim), and it's lyrical qualities.