The music to Violet Fire should sound familiar to most listeners, as it uses harmonies and rhythms that can be found in classical, jazz and popular western music, and is performed by traditional music forces — voice and instruments, along with some sampled and treated sounds. The music can be described as pulsing sonic fields over which the libretto is sung. Texture, repetition, stasis, rhythm and melody establish themselves and then change, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly in an ongoing shifting blend of musical elements.

​- Jon Gibson

Nikola Tesla's groundbreaking discoveries in alternating current, radio, robotics and other fields grew from an extravagant imagination. His love for a white pigeon, and the vision he had on her death, was for me a poignant touchstone of this astounding inner life. Making their relationship the core of the libretto, and letting the pigeon sing, allowed me entry to a dreamlike world in which others, including Tesla’s friends Mark Twain and Katharine Johnson, and the author Margaret Storm, could join in and have their say. 

​-Miriam Seidel