Pennsylvania-based singer/songwriter, producer, and composer Emily Wells has announced the release of The Fires, her original score for the theatre play of the same name that premiered at NYC’s SoHo Rep theatre last May. The 8-track album drops almost exactly one year later, arriving May 2 via Thesis & Instinct Records (pre-save).

The playwriting debut of acclaimed dancer and choreographer Raja Feather Kelly, The Fires tells the layered stories of three black men living in the same South Brooklyn railroad apartment at different times – in 1974, 1998, and 2021 – though, for the purposes of the staging, at the same time. 

Wells’s score was described by New York Stage Review as “otherworldly” and having a “shimmering charm,” and it appears here in full alongside bonus outtakes and improvisations. “My hope is to illuminate and further contextualize the music and the play by sharing process materials alongside the score itself,” she says.

The Fires is Wells’s first new music since 2022’s Regards to the End, and was written, recorded, and produced by Wells herself – though she credits Kelly for his direction, clarity, and inspiration for the recordings, saying “without him this score would not exist.” 

The Fires (Original Score) is out May 2. Full tracklist below: 

1. All Three Worlds
2. Band at Last Call
3. The Movie Score
4. Sam Reads Jay’s Notebook
5. Vignette 4 (The Fires piano improvisations)
6. Sam’s Door
7. The Fires (electric demo)
8. The Fires (the play version)

A listening party for the album will take place on Bandcamp on 2 May.