Inara George Resurrects Lost Theater Songs From the AIDS Crisis Era for a New Album and Tour

Inara George’s latest release isn’t built from new material but from a set of songs that almost no one has heard. Songs of Douglass & Littell, out earlier this year, pulls from an early-’90s AIDS crisis theater work called No Miracle, A Consolation — pieces written by composer Eliot Douglass and librettist Philip Littell, performed only for small audiences at the time and never recorded. George, who had known the writers for years, decided those songs deserved a second life.

Her approach was deliberately unhurried. A couple of years ago, she gathered a band at the intimate Pasadena venue Healing Force of the Universe, where they tested the material with a jazz-inflected angle. Producer Mike Andrews heard the show, encouraged a recording, and after a few more live runs, the group cut the album quickly — no label strategy, no commercial pressure. “If I’m going to do this, I want to do something that’s fun and interesting,” George said. The result is a quiet act of preservation, shaped by friendship and a sense that beautiful work shouldn’t disappear.

George’s discography already stretches across solo albums and her long-running project with Greg Kurstin, the Bird and the Bee, but Songs of Douglass & Littell feels distinct: a sideways step driven by personal history rather than career momentum. She’s now taking the material on a short tour, giving these lost songs their widest audience yet. For George, the tour isn’t a comeback — she never really left — but a chance to share something she simply thinks other people should hear.