Songsmith David Rhymer set challenging topics to music for stage productions

Open this photo in gallery: Over his career, composer David Rhymer, pictured in 2021, wrote cabarets, song cycles and chamber musicals that often sought to uncover hidden corners of history.Sean Dennie/One Yellow Rabbit Calgary-based writer and composer David Rhymer never met a topic that he couldn't put a tune to. His musical subjects included unrepentant old Nazis, Holocaust deniers, Bible-thumping eco-terrorists, Regency prostitutes, West Coast nudists, Mata Hari, William S. Burroughs, Freud and Jung. He naturally gravitated toward the difficult, the dark and the controversial. Either on his own, or in collaboration - most frequently, with the avant-garde One Yellow…