CD Reviews

BassoonMusic   

Peter Kolkay, bassoon

with Alexandra Nguyen, piano

CAG Records

• BassoonMusic – George Perle
• The Dark Hours – Judah Adashi
• Andy Warhol Sez – Paul Moravec
• Three Songs – Russell Platt
• Seven Desert Elegies – John Fitz Rogers
• Journey – Katherine Hoover

Bassoonists rarely feel the love in the contemporary music world. It seems like all the attention went towards the flute, clarinet, and saxophone leaving the double reeds to lurk in the corner of Baroque or 19th century repertoire. Sometimes they’ll break out the Zappa quote but for the most part the bassoon seems to be ignored outside of the Common Practice Period. This disc by bassoonist Peter Kolkay buts the breaks on that kind of thinking and reminds us that one of the most iconic and recognizable figures that gave birth to “contemporary music,” if you will, was a bassoon solo. How apt that the disc begins with George Perle’s BassoonMusic, an unaccompanied piece that uses the opening measures of Le sacre du printemps as one of its primary gestures. Amidst the Stravinsky quotes and transformation lies other contrasting materials that, if they aren’t directly from other famous bassoon excerpts, sound as if they were. Peter Kolkay is all over the instrument, his tone and articulations perfectly matched to the demands of the material. Not only is this work first on the disc, it is also the oldest work on the CD dating from way back in 2004. Kolkay has a brilliant lineup of pieces that show great composers are making extremely compelling cases for composers to write bassoon music (and for performers to play more modern stuff).

Judah Adashi’s The Dark Hours from 2007 is a meaty three movement work. The music is austere, lyrical, and rich with extended tonal harmonies. Even when very little is happening on the surface, my attention is always held fast by the music. Andy Warhol Sez by Paul Moravec is a series of playful miniatures separated by spoken Warhol quotes. Each miniature works well with neither too much or too little material and they reflect the various quotes nicely. I was a little turned off by the actual spoken quotes, though. I would have preferred to just hear the music and save the quotes for reading material.

Unaccompanied music returns with Russell Platt’s Three Songs, all short lovely movements that contemplate simple melodic shapes. The stark Seven Desert Elegies by John Fitz Rogers is held together more by a lugubrious ensemble momentum than virtuosic pyrotechnics. The duo coalesces into a single voice quite well on this piece. There are more fireworks in the shorter movements of Katherine Hoover’s Journey but again the bulk of the piece is based upon tender lyrical lines and a continuity of sound with the piano. Kolkay’s tone is entrancing. Not only do I listen to his melodic line, I get lost in the layers of overtones that emerge. Alexandra Nguyen’s piano work is fluid, gentle, and effortless. These two make quite a pairing and I look forward to hearing more releases by them.

Caprichos Enfaticos
by Martin Bresnick
So Percussion; Lisa Moore, piano
Cantaloupe Music CD

It takes chutzpah to base a musical composition around an iconic piece of visual art. Francisco Goya’s Los Destastres de la Guerra (“The Disasters of War”) is a book of etchings that captures the human toll of combat (as well as its toll on the rest of creation) with a visceral impact that has seldom been equaled. Using it as the basis for a musical piece, even going so far as to use Goya’s own phrases for movement titles? A composer who does so better bring the goods or they will likely be dwarfed by comparison. Fortunately, Martin Bresnick’s Caprichos Enfaticos is eminently capable of complementing its powerful source material. Indeed, it’s one of his most affecting pieces to date, one in which there is a fluid progression from traditionally inspired material to more dissonant and abstract expression.

A particular reference point is a chain dance that originated in Provence, called the farandula, or farandole. Its 6/8 phrases are juxtaposed with bellicose marches played on snare drums and interspersed with ruminative and achingly piteous interludes for piano and pitched percussion.

Cast in eight movements, the piece mirrors the trajectory of Goya’s etchings from a semblance of order and civilization to chthonic brutality.  In successive iterations, the gestural language of the farandole and folk-like thematic material is overwhelmed by a noisier environment: populated with a diverse battery of percussion instruments and a correspondingly chaotic phraseology.

In live performances, Caprichos Enfaticos is accompanied by video projections created by Johanna Bresnick and based on the Goya works. So Percussion and pianist Lisa Moore inhabit the music with a persuasive, commanding, and detailed performance on record: one can only imagine its powerful impact coupled with Goya’s artworks in a live setting.

Not only was chutzpah an ingredient of this project, but so was a seamless collaborative spirit. Meet the Composer commissioned this piece for So Percussion and Moore, and it is a truly inspired partnership. One hopes that it is merely the beginning of a long musical relationship.

Susanna Phillips (soprano)
Myra Huang (piano)
Paysages
Bridge Records
http://www.bridgerecords.com/catpage.php?call=9356

I’m pretty sure French vocal music wouldn’t be considered the type of music one would blast in one’s car.  Well, I was. Until I listened to, and most definitely blasted in my car, Susanna Phillips’s debut solo album Paysages.

Easily one of the best solo vocal albums of the year, Paysages gives the listener more than a collection of songs; within it is music so purely fluid, breathtaking, and surreal that a listen is more of a journey to a separate world than an addition to an existing one. Phillips has included three composers on the album: Debussy, Fauré, and Messiaen. While all three are French, lived in similar time periods, and use comparable sounds occasionally, each composer brings out a different perspective in their choice of texts and music, and Phillips takes advantage of this. She is able to take each song, which posses unique destinations and atmospheres, and create a true collection, something that is varying but connected.

The first six tracks on the album are Debussy’s “Ariettes oubliées,” or “forgotten songs,” composed between 1885 and 1887. The song cycle is said to have marked Debussy’s evolution from a more traditional composer to one of his own style. Like many of Debussy’s pieces for voice, the vocal lines are natural and feel as if they permanently reside along with the clouds of ambiguous sound the piano creates. The poetry for this collection, by Paul Verlaine, reaches insightful observations through painting-like images (“It weeps in my heart like the rain over the village. What is this exhaustion that penetrates my heart?”).

Phillips latches on to Debussy’s liquid phrases and seems effortless from the moment she allows her voice to flow out to the last trickles of sound. “C’est l’extase,” the first track on the album, is a wandering yet determined. Included are sounds ranging from calm phrases to cries that curve like feathers in air.  In contrast, “Chevaux de Bois” is like a train on a track with its steady pace and subtle sforzandos.  Myra Huang, Phillips’s accompanist, handles the piano parts perfectly as well. Because of Debussy’s finesse with the instrument, the piano parts are pieces in and of themselves (such as the arpeggios in “Green”). However, with the balance that Huang offers, they allow the voice to be in the appropriate position at each moment.

Messiaen’s “Poémes pour Mi,” with their more dissonant, east-of-France-inspired sounds, show both the musical atmosphere in France after Debussy (though it originally was not accepted fully) and Phillips’s ability to make their slightly unsettling timbres beautiful in their own way. The vocals of Messiaen (written by the composer himself for his first wife, nicknamed “Mi”) are more introverted than Debussy’s and Fauré’s choice of poetry. The music reflects this; the dissonance of the piano and the repetitive tones of the voice seem more like a conversation with oneself than a presentation to another. “Paysage” begins with a ghost-like flutter and includes murmurs of rain-like piano. “Epouvante” is sly and angry. The piano is mushy and assertive, and Phillips’s cries and partially-a cappella statements are chilling. Along with Phillips, Huang gives Messiaen’s pieces the creepy, echo filled accompaniment they need. Because Fauré and Debussy’s songs have generally more soft and delicate sounds, “Poémes pour Mi” give the album just the right amount of angst.

Rounding out the broad representation of French composers on Paysages is Fauré, the composer who resided in the transition from Romanticism to the 20^th century’s modernism. The four songs by Fauré on the album aren’t a cycle, but give the listener a sense of his finesse with voice and Phillips’s ability to stand out in these iconic French songs.  The poetry from Charles Jean Grandmougin and Romain Bussine is gorgeous and subtle (Reading Grandmougin’s words from “Adieu” is definitely a bonus of the album). “Les Roses d’Ispahan” has a piano part that is almost a perfect blend of Schumann-like Romanticism and glassy impressionism. The classic melody of “Nell” gives Phillips’s the opportunity to take her voice in multiple directions and in a conversational, natural style. “Après un rêve” pairs a simple, solid piano accompaniment with heart-wrenching vocals.

“Adieu,” the last track on the album, is delicate and discusses how everything is subject to change. In it, Grandmougin’s words are (in English), “But alas! The longest of loves are cut short!” I’d like to think that Grandmougin writes about Phillips’s and Paysages–it’s an album that, no matter how long it could go on, can only have one downfall—the moment it stops.

itsnotyouisme
Everybody’s Pain is Magnificent
New Amsterdam Records

Grey McMurray and Caleb Burhans have been performing together as itsnotyouitsme since 2003. In the past five years, they have released three recordings. Their latest, Everybody’s Pain is Magnificent is a sprawling double album set of material. It celebrates the gradual developing soundscapes and lushly ambient sonics that are signatures the group’s sound. Unlike many ill-fated double albums, which run out of steam or seem padded, EPiM requires the extra time to develop its sweeping musical architectures and allow the listener to luxuriate, bathed in the music’s honeyed harmonies and finely spun textures. It’s been in heavy rotation in these parts this Fall. If you haven’t heard it, you are missing out on one of 2011′s most rewarding ambient treasures.





Below, the band shares a ‘wintry’-sounding video of a recent live performance.

everybody’s pain is magnificent by itsnotyouitsme

Ironworks Percussion Duo 

1 

Dave Gerhart and Axel Clarke, percussion 

• Uncompression – Ming-ching Chiu
• Volume – Missy Mazzoli
• Tribute – Dave Gerhart
• Arc & Current – Roger Przytulski
• A Cosby Sweater – Axel Clarke

Arc & Current is the most pitch-based work and uses only steel drums as its instrumentation. Irregular rhythms and punchy homophonic accents motivate the Arc movement while a more tender and slower (although not THAT slow) melodic line winds through Current. Under these irregular melodic phrases come moments of pop-inspired cadential harmony which work very nicely. This final movement reminded me of harmonic and structural moments in the Levitan Marimba Quartet. Arc & Current contrasts with the rest of the works on this disc but, come to think of it, so does every other piece on this disc… At any rate, Ironworks makes all of these musical styles sound natural to them and manages to relate the sound world of each piece to the others. Each composition sounds different yet the entire album sounds coherent. Both Dave Gerhart and Axel Clarke should be commended on their performances, recording, and programming of this disc. I can’t wait to hear 2.

Toshio Hosokawa
Landscapes
Mayumi Miyata, shô;
Munich Chamber Orchestra; Alexander Liebreich, conductor

Composer Toshio Hosokawa (b. 1955) has been featured once before on an ECM recording, as one of three composers programmed on a recital disc by Thomas Demenga. Landscapes is his first portrait disc for the imprint. It features a number of fine performers who are ideal advocates for Hosokawa’s fluid and multifaceted musical language. The Munich Chamber Orchestra, led by Alexander Liebreich, has become a featured ensemble on ECM’s New Series. The quality of their interpretations here readily support the notion of them remaining a ‘house band’ for the Manfred Eicher curated imprint.

Hosokawa’s work combines the influences of Darmstadt school second modernity with elements from traditional Japanese (and Chinese) culture, ranging from gagaku (courtly ceremonial music) and the employment of traditional instruments to examples from fine art: calligraphy and landscape paintings. In works like Ceremonial Dance and Cloud and Light, one is impressed with how seamlessly these various, at times disparate, elements are synthesized. This is particularly evident on Ceremonial Dance, where acerbic harmonies combine with sliding tones to fashion a hybrid of East/West techniques that sounds truly organic and self-contained. Cloud and Light works from a similar palette. But here there is also an interesting juxtaposition of delicate sustained shô and string chords and thunderous low register outbursts.

In addition to participating in Cloud and Light, shô (mouth organ) player Mayumi Miyata is also featured on two other pieces on the disc. Back in 1993, Landscape V was originally scored for shô and string quartet. This updated version for larger ensemble works equally well; both renditions are hauntingly eloquent tone poems. Miyata takes a solo turn on Sakura für Otto Tomek, a work filled with slowly evolving complex clusters of harmony. Sakura’s meditative ambience is shadowed with portentous overtones, creating a rich showcase for the singular and fetching timbres of the shô.

Hosokawa has long been respected in both Japan and Europe. Of late, given the strong reception given Matsukaze, his second opera, in Berlin, his stock has risen considerably in the Euro Zone. One hopes that more American conductors and ensembles will take notice of Hosokawa, a composer with a compelling individual voice developing an impressive body of work.

Peter Garland

Waves Breaking on Rocks

Aki Takahashi – piano

Ari Streisfeld – violin

John Duykers – tenor

Santa Fe New Music:

David Felberg, Ikuko Kanda – violin

James Shields – bass clarinet

John Marchiando – trumpet

Lynn Gorman – harp

Madeline Williamson – piano

Jeff Cornelius, Angela Gabriel, Jim Goulden, David Tolen – percussion

John Kennedy – conductor

http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=89976

Humans are quite remarkable when it comes to determining sizes. We can estimate how many people it will take to complete a job. If blindfolded, we have the skills to determine whether we are in a large amphitheater or small room. We can estimate the size of an airplane by its approaching sound. But music is the ultimate deceiver, isn’t it?

Hypothetical and literal size are beautifully separated in the newly released album of music by Peter Garland (b. 1952), Waves Breaking on Rocks. The album consists of his piano work, “Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us),” and his piece for tenor and chamber ensemble, “The Roque Dalton Songs.” Garland is an American composer whose works have often been considered post-minimal.

Waves Breaking on Rocks pairs two very different compositions. The topic of deceptive “sizes” of the pieces spawns from the size of their instrumentation: “Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us)” is for solo piano while “The Roque Dalton Songs” employ many musicians—but their impressions reflect the opposite. The piano work is expansive and watery, conjuring large images and panoramic landscapes. The songs for tenor travel in a narrower path—tribal in their percussion, gospel-like in their tone pairings, and purposefully targeted, they give off a small, focused vibe. Both of the pieces benefit from their aural sizes, and create an album of sounds that is attention grabbing and varied. Deceiving isn’t always a bad thing.

“Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us)” is a suite of elegies. Divided into six parts, the suite commemorates six different people that Garland has lost in his life. It is composed almost entirely of chords, and creates more of a space than a linear narration. Each section might not get stuck in your head, such as a certain sentence from a lost one might not, but the overall ambiance of that person can be surfaced with subtle things, and this piece creates those moods.

Pianist Aki Takahashi could not have performed the piece better—she keeps the serene lines of the suite flowing and consistent with the stories being told. The last piece in the suite, “Waves Breaking on Rocks 2/Autumn (Again),” shows her control and ability to avoid even slight dynamic rises that would break the tranquility of the piece.

The suite begins with “The White Place,” referring to the limestone formations in Abiquiu, New Mexico called Plaza Blanca, and commemorates the photographer Walter Chappell. Beautifully piercing, monumental chords set up the foundations for each phrase of the piece and are followed by smaller, controlled hills of hushed tones. The entire suite utilizes ostensibly simple chords, but when listened to they create a dreamy story that is complex in the way nature is seamlessly intricate.

Through each of the pieces, the chords unravel into wandering and separated lines. Significant change comes in “A House in Island Bay,” composed for poet Alan Brunton. The listener is reminded of small rocks rippling on a lake as still as glass. It progresses to the intense solidity of previous chords. The last two sections of “Waves Breaking on Rocks” are Americana in their own ways—“Sierra Madre,” composed for composer Lou Harrison, is homey and nostalgic and is the only section to use violin, and appropriate and comfortable addition. “Waves Breaking on Rocks 2/Autumn (Again)” is a still and jazz-tinged piece, and is almost impossible to listen to without stopping for a minute (or five minutes and forty six seconds) and being absorbed by it.

“The Roque Dalton Songs,” the second collection on the album, is a collection with much more of a landing spot than “Waves Breaking on Rocks.” Though the instrumentation is larger, it is less expansive, and this isn’t a bad thing. The listener’s brain follows the music in a more direct line—if “Waves Breaking on Rocks” was a walk in a meadow, “The Roque Dalton Songs” are a hike through a specific path. Roque Dalton was a Salvadorian poet and revolutionary who was executed during El Salvador’s civil war.  Five of Dalton’s poems were set to music by Garland in this piece. The poems range from free verse to dialogue to prose (“he was a really super cool guy” is probably my favorite line), and they seem very human, like Dalton can be seen scribbling the words onto paper right in front of you.

The chamber ensemble, Santa Fe New Music, is comprised of percussion, harp, piano, trumpet, bass clarinet, and violins. The ensemble is successful in layering the very obvious sheets of sound—the percussion, piano, and harp construct a stable foundation, the bass clarinet and trumpet create the walls, and the violins occupy the figurative room of sound. The tenor John Duykers keeps a triumphant tone throughout the entire collection, and conquers the sometimes out-of-the-blue high notes. The music keeps a dance rhythm, resolving itself at the end of each phrase, and doesn’t really break free of this except for the second piece, the smooth and sly “Como La Siempreviva,” and inside the fourth piece, “History of a Poetic.” The final piece, “Como Tú,” employs the harp in a refreshing way by retaining the previous piece’s dance like feel. However, it makes it more of a sensual one, like a dance between two people in privacy.

A piano is one object. A chamber ensemble is many. But sound is one idea, and Peter Garland’s album Waves Breaking on Rocks enforces that. Deceived or not, these are waves worth listening to.

Alexander Berne

Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes (2 discs)

Innova Recordings

http://www.amazon.com/Berne-Flickers-Mime-Death-Memes/dp/B005S7JEOI

What do you get when you combine Kubrick moods, outer space, Middle Eastern vibes, clouds of metal timbre, and a lot of talent in mixing those ingredients? Something similar to a disc by Alexander Berne. How about combining the primeval, the creepily serene, and the sense of slow motion. You’ll get the same thing.

Now, coalesce both of those, and you’ll get an illustration of the arc of human nature woven into an ambient collection. Or, more accurately, you’ll get Alexander Berne’s new album Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes.

Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes is the third collection of works by Berne and his Abandoned Orchestra. Berne is a composer from New York who has primarily immersed himself in the jazz scenes of America and Belgium. He is a saxophonist and has also invented a new wind instrument, one he calls the “saduk,” a mixture between a saxophone and a duduk.

Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes is an album divided into two discs. The first, Flickers of Mime, is meant to symbolize what a mime might create using its bare movements. Many of the tracks off this disc include very 80s-space sounding, sustained notes, such as “Flicker I” and “Flicker VII,” while many others include eastern scales and timbres. However, these tracks are not obviously themed. Each is soon invaded with other ambient sounds that help the disc do what it was meant to do; through each of the “flickers” on the first disc, a different world, structure, or mood is built. Despite some of the celestial sounds, Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes does not use any synthesizers or the like. “Flicker VIII” sounds like calm, Middle Eastern-sounding club music, and can be compared to songs by Mocean Worker with its sassy wind motifs paired with loose piano phrases. “Flicker X” is a whirlwind of sounds that the listener arrives at in linear ways, like passing each one in a car.  While each track is one train of thought without much individual development, the way the flickers are lined up in the album creates one leg of the arch that is Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes.  “Flicker XI,” the last track on the disc, is eerily similar to “Flicker II,” but with faded glances back at previous flickers.

The second disc, Death of Memes, is meant to be the second leg of the arch—the one that recedes back to the ground. One would more literal apocalyptic sounds on a disc that illustrates the downfall of a society. But the pieces on the disc are mostly loosely primitive, like the aftermath of said apocalypse. While Berne’s album’s first disc focuses on the construction of aural formations, the second one is the destruction of those. The perspective is also different on the two discs. Flickers of Mime is, hypothetically, meant to come from the hands of one man. Death of Memes describes the downfall of a large mass, like a city. Many of the tracks on the disc are much more subtle, such as “Meme III,” a piece of unfettered yet serene piano accompanied by ambient drones. “Meme I” is one of the only tracks that moves slightly in the realm of more aggressive dystopia, with subdued timpani and other percussion.

Alexander Berne’s Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes is an album that doesn’t fall into the whirlpool that ambient music, or music of the sort, sometimes can—monotony. Because of the well thought-out relationships between the two discs, Berne has constructed a body of work that works together in ways not only aurally, but conceptually. It offers a new way of looking at the arch of humanity; the arch that we ourselves, as humans, might never understand.

A Different World 

string chamber music of James MacMillan 

Gregory Harrington, violin 

Estile Records 

• Kiss on Wood
• After the Tryst
• A Different World
• Fourteen Little Pictures
• Walfrid, on his Arrival at the Gates of Paradise
• 25th May, 1967
• In Angustiis…I
• In Angustiis…II (for violin solo)

James MacMillan’s lyrical instrumental writing often takes a back seat to his choral work and the compositions and performances on this CD make an excellent case against seeing MacMillan as someone restricted to the vocal idiom. Violinist Gregory Harrington is the central figure in these compositions and particularly shines on the opening three pieces for violin and piano. The wistful and lonesome melodic lyricism is expressive and emotionally compelling while still sounding very much of contemporary times. Pianist Simon Mulligan makes an excellent collaborator in these three works and is given a bit more to chew upon when cellist Caroline Stinson joins in for the Fourteen Little Pictures for piano trio. These miniatures are strung together in a seemingly stream-of-consciousness form that I find difficult to parse into separate components. On the one hand, the trio blends together extremely well for a singular chamber sound. On the other, the fourteen smaller works, almost entirely attacca, makes grasping the through line a bit of a challenge, at least to my ears. Programming this piece in the middle of the album makes a lot of formal sense. The shorter pieces do well to frame this 20 minute monolith.

The somber and haunting-yet-real musical material of the violin and piano works returns in Walfrid, on his Arrival at the Gates of Paradise for solo piano. Abruptly, the scene changes from the contemplative into a delightful dance tune towards the end. I find this move particularly enjoyable since it plays on the idea of being sad that someone is entering paradise. I can’t hear the dance tune strike up without smiling and, at the same time, being a little sad. Simon Mulligan has a generally light and breezy touch on the keys which keeps even the heaviest of chords from sounding too downtrodden. Similar treatment holds true for the piano works 25th May, 1967 and In Angustiis…I. The final track brings attention to the crystalline sounds of Gregory Harrington, who here brings an almost folk-ish quality to the solo violin version of In Angustiis…II. There is a permeating sadness to the piece but the affect is one of solitary contemplation instead of heart wrenching sobs. MacMillan’s music is evocative and expressive, even when he isn’t setting text which expresses those emotions. The performers and performances on this disc seize every opportunity for expression on this recording and make a very compelling disc.

Daniel Okulitch, baritone

The New American Art Song

Songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Lowell Liebermann and Glen Roven, accompanied by the composers

GPR Records

The first solo record by Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch is an impeccable portrait of his voice’s warm and earthy elegance. Through sets of songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Glen Roven and Lowell Liebermann, Mr. Okulitch’s voice comes across as richly dark, sensitive and – above all – clear. The songs themselves are very good and lovely as well, but do not necessarily display a wide swath of the landscape of contemporary American song. With this fact stated, I want to stress that each cycle has beautiful, poignant moments and are scrupulously written…they are just cut from a similar cloth in terms of their musical materials. Because the composers actually accompany Mr. Okulitch on the recording, I was particularly attentive to the interplay between the piano and vocal parts. The role of the two musical characters varied greatly between and within each group of songs, providing – along with the transient moods of the texts – the listener with welcome volatility and contrast against the stylistic consistently of the works and Mr. Okulitch’s undeviatingly sterling performance.

Dominating the CD is Glen Roven’s from the Underground, a set of fifteen songs each with an isolated personality and texture, yet united by Mr. Roven’s mostly triadic and diatonic musical fabric. The piano imitates the vocal line in many of the songs, strengthening the reflection of, “[Mr. Roven’s] personal feelings about each poem”, which he describes is his goal when writing art songs. Repetitive rhythms in the piano accompaniments, combined with humorous texts gave some songs, like “This is Just to Say”, the flavor of musical theater music (an affect that reappears in other cycles on this disc). Though I enjoyed the whole set, I felt the song “Come to the Edge” was the most beautiful – perhaps perfectly constructed – thanks to the absolutely engrossing way the vocal line pairs with the piano. Mr. Okulitch’s part begins quietly, accompanied by timorous pandiatonic clusters in the piano, the two musical bodies simultaneous build momentum, energy and scope until the vocal line climaxes and the piano part spills into a valley of lush extended triads, marking the most important moment in the poem.

The musical hints at musical theater I noted in from the Underground are also apparent in the album’s first cycle – Ricky Ian Gordon’s Quiet Lives. To me, all songs are theatrical and narrative, so I am not surprised – in a contemporary music world typified by the fusion of popular and traditional motifs – that the clear phrasing and persistent rhythms of musical theater songs have bled into the already closely related genre of ‘art song’. Like all the composers on the album, Mr. Gordon has written some stunningly beautiful songs fueled by very interesting texts with the exact personality of each song remaining pretty variable. Contrastinglt to from the Underground, the piano is limited to a strictly accompanimental presence and does not often double or imitate the vocal line. Conveniently, the cycle’s extremes in mood appear adjacent to each other. “As Planned” features a sarcastic text discussing the unpredictable consequences of drinking too much vodka, with the air of mischief shared in the piano’s tongue-in-cheek, cabaret-style waltz. The following song, “Kid in the Park” is the cycle’s most reflective, with a piano part that hints, with the most extraordinary subtleness, to slow, R&B ballads (I could very well be imagining such a connection exists). The tempo and chordal accompaniment leave Mr. Okulitch plenty of room to draw the listener into the text’s account of the challenges facing urban youths.

The two remaining cycles both stood out to me with their more coherent character/mood (thanks, no doubt, to their relative brevity in comparison to the aforementioned works), and subtly cultivated drama. Lowell Liebermann’s Night Songs, probably the most traditional sounding of the disc, paints a delicate and convincing portrait of the introspection that so often accompanies the setting of the sun. This is particularly apparent in the set’s first two songs – “Good Night” and “She Tells Her Love Half Asleep” – whose repetitive accompaniments and melodies firmly establish a musical world haunted by the stillness of moonlight and stars. Jake Heggie’s Of Gods and Cats had, by far, the most memorable texts of the whole album. The first, “In the Beginning”, retells the biblical creation through the perspective of a cat engaging with quotidian experiences such as drinking milk and falling asleep in a paper bag. Closing out the pair is “Once upon a Universe”, which describes what God was like as a child, destroying his toys much to the chagrin of his mother. Of course, the text is not so engrossing on its own accord: Mr. Heggie sets it both impishly and austerely, with the piano part adding masterfully timed moments of levity to an otherwise reverent portrayal of poet Gavin Geoffrey Dillard’s comical musings.