WEST STOCKBRIDGE — Steven Santoro has spent a lot of his life thinking about death.

“I don’t want to call it an obsession, because I think everybody has it really, but it’s this constant feeling that we’re all going to the same place,” he said in an interview with The Eagle. He then paused, letting the thought sink in: “We’re all going to die someday.”

Santoro, a singer-songwriter, dove into that subject head-first with “here. gone.,” a song cycle for string quartet and vocalist, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 19, at The Foundry.

“I didn’t try to write a musical or make more sense of it than that,” said Santoro, who is based in Northampton. “I just wanted to wanted to present these ideas to people, knowing that they’re universal.”

As a kid, Santoro would sit at the edge of his bed with his head buried in the mattress, trying to imagine what “nothing” would feel like — what it would mean to not exist.

“That’s kind of the underlying feeling of it all,” he said.

Since his solo album debut, “Moods and Grooves,” released in 1995 by Atlantic Records, Santoro has channeled jazz and R&B through contemporary songs. But this project allowed him to think more theatrically, to create a little world for each song.

“What I wanted to do was just let my mind wander and let myself write songs that just wanted to come out,” he said.

In the song “Boom Bada Boom,” The Grim Reaper muses on his own eternal patience.

In “A Ghost in the House,” well, a ghost lingers in its human home, not ready to leave the world of the living.

In “Gay Dance Party 1981,” a drag queen crashes a get-together with news of a “gay cancer.”

“I graduated from college in 1986. I was out in the world at that time when everybody was dying and went through such a long time of being terrified for my life,” Santoro said. “I was constantly checking under my arms, for swollen lymph nodes, any sign of a cough or cold. Sex equaled death to us.”

Through writing the song, he’s been in conversation with his 20-something self, trying to make sense of that moment through who he’s become.

“To me, that’s what art does. It doesn’t necessarily answer any questions,” he said. “It puts something forward for us to look at and think about and face.”

Before Santoro started this project, he felt musically stalled. Everything he wrote sounded sort of alike — which, he’s quick to point out, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“We all recognize a Bruce Sprinsgteen tune. We all recognize a Sting tune. All writers have qualities that we sort of sink into, and if that goes unchallenged we’ll continue to do that,” Santoro said. “And while there’s nothing wrong with that, I was at a point where I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

Santoro, a longtime professor at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, first conceived “here. gone.” while rehearsing a colleague’s concert of Elvis Costello’s “The Juliet Letters,” an album written for string quartet.

“I was at a rehearsal and had my piece in front of me and was looking at the string parts and I said to myself, ‘These are just a bunch of notes. I can do this,’” he said. “From that rehearsal on, I was fired up.”

He decided that when he next composed, he would abandon his typical instrumentation: a rhythm section, piano, bass, guitars, synthesizer.

“And I did something that I had never done before: write for string quartet,” he said. “The strings have to be everything, the drummer, the keyboard player. It was a big challenge, and scary to begin. I thought it would be out of my league or something.”

Once Santoro started writing, though, he fell into a groove. “I understood right away what this kind of writing meant for my project. The cello has to take a big part, being a sort of bass player and drummer, 80 percent of the time, and the other instruments fill in accordingly,” he said. “I just started to get it. And the more I did it, the faster I was able to write that way.”

Santoro wrote the first five songs in 2019, and the rest during pandemic shutdowns. “It’s weird that there’s not a COVID song in it,” he said. “Maybe it felt too obvious, I’m not sure. I didn’t feel the need.”

This spring, he performed “here. gone.” live for the first time, at BOMBYX Center for Arts and Equality, in Northampton. He also recorded it as an album, along with The Turtle Island Quartet.

“I don’t know what will happen with this project, if I’ll ever be able to bring it to much larger audiences, but I have to say just that one time, being able to play it for people meant the world to me,” he said.

A few days after his interview, Santoro sent The Eagle an email with some logistical information, but he added a message. “By the way,” he wrote. “If you come to see the show, you’ll see that it’s way more about life than it is about death.”

IF YOU GO

What: “here. gone.,” a song cycle for string quartet and a vocalist

Who: Steven Santoro, writer and performer

Where: The Foundry, 2 Harris St., West Stockbridge

When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 19

Tickets: $25 advance; $30 at door

Information and Reservations: 413-232-5222, thefoundryws.com