In 2024 Chicago’s Cedille Records released several CDs featuring vocal music, continuing a trend from 2023. Several include world premier recordings of works by Chicago composers. Others resurrect long-ignored songs by composers who are little remembered.
Most of the vocal music is of the so-called art song variety, but there are several examples of folk and blues-inspired traditions. There is also a CD for children, with stories set to music. Children’s choirs are also used in a couple of places.
Cedille packages these releases in a way that provides the listener with a fully meaningful experience. Typical is a three-way, gatefold sleeve with extensive program notes, the CD itself, and, if necessary, a translated libretto. Such extensive documentation greatly helps enjoyment levels for world premieres and for older music that is new to most listeners.
Of course, there were a few examples of purely instrumental music, including concertos based on songs. But let’s start with the vocals, and an instant classic.
Rarely has a new piece of music smitten me as much as Stacy Garrop’s oratorio, Terra Nostra. Adapting texts from Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walt Whitman, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Esther Iverem, Lord Byron, and several other poets and writers, Garrop tells the story of our planet in three parts. She starts with creation myths, moves to the rise of humanity, and ends with the challenges our modern world is facing.
Performing this piece requires a huge number of players, too many to list on the CD’s cover. In this recording, many are affiliated with Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, including conductor Stephen Alltop, a member of the conducting faculty at the Bienen School. He leads the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Alice Millar Chapel Choir. The Chicago-based Uniting Voices adds the voices of children to the score. A vocal quartet of soprano Michelle Areyzaga, mezzo-soprano Leah Dexter, tenor Jesse Donner, and bass-baritone David Govertsen share the solo duties. Somehow Alltop effectively manages this large assemblage, and the recording is spot-on.
Punctuated by the first words of the King James Bible “In the beginning,” the first section is filled with drama and suspense, as it draws from the creation myths from India, North America, Egypt, and the Bible. It transitions to the middle section with anticipation, as expressed by United Voces and the Northwestern Chorus in Walt Whitman’s “A Blade of Grass.”
The raucous middle section focuses on humanity’s achievements. “Railways 1846” by Charles MacKay takes us back to chugging sounds of the steam engine. This transitions without pause to “Song of Speed” by William Ernest Henley, which points to the Mecedes as an engineering marvel, all “In the Eye of the Lord.” This is followed by “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Terra Nostra concludes with deep reflection on what this all means, and how there must be balance if the earth is to remain inhabitable in the midst of all this change. “Darkness” by Lord Byron imagines the world with the sun extinguished and “Earth Screaming” by Esther Iverem calls to climate changes with the loss of the upper atmosphere and water sources drying up. It ends with hope from Walt Whitman, as expressed by United Voices in “There was a child went forth every day.” It concludes with everyone joining in on a reprise of “A Blade of Grass,” followed by “I bequeath myself.”
Welcome to the world, Terra Nostra! It’s been worthy of many listens. Thank you, Stacy Garrop.
Baritone/pianist Will Liverman’s two-CD release, Show Me the Way, explores American women composers and songwriters over several genres and time periods. With spicy accompaniment by pianist Jonathan King, Liverman’s cheerful, mellifluous tone allows him to cross these different styles with ease.
The slow, jazzy feel of the opening title track, “Show Me the Way,” sets the tone. It is from very early in Ella Fitzgerald’s career in 1937, and she wrote it with members of Chick Webb’s orchestra; Jonahtan King arranged it for voice and piano.
Other African American composers are prominent on these discs, including the Chicago based Florence Price and Margaret Bonds. The first of Price’s two contributions, “I Grew a Rose,” is a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. It is a bittersweet lament about a blooming rose that gets plucked by a thoughtless child, who fled the scene. For the second, “Songs to the Dark Virgin,” Price turned a poem by Langston Hughes into a charming melody. Starting with very low notes, Liverman made it a resonate.
Liverman commissioned A Sable Jubilee by composer Jasmine Barnes and poet Tesia Kwarteng to celebrate “black joy,” which opens “Inspiration,” the first of three songs in this work. With a frolicking beat, “Inspiration” allows Liverman to explore the top of his vocal range.
The second disc opens with “Ah, Love is a Jasmine Vine,” from Amy Beach's opera, Cabildo, libretto by Nan Bagby Stephens. Here, Liverman is joined by soprano Nicole Cabell, violinist Lady Jess, and Cellist Tahirah Whittington. Soprano Renee Fleming joins him for another world premiere recording, this one of “Everything That Ever Was” by Sarah Kirkland Snider to a text by Tracy K. Smith.
In a poignant conclusion, Will Liverman switches to the piano to accompany his mother Terry Liverman in a heartening rendition of Alma Bazel Androzzo’s hymn, “If I Can Help Somebody.” The Livermans arranged this themselves, and Terry applied her warm voice to beautiful effect.
Tenor Ian Koziara, backed up by pianist Bradley Moore, presents songs by central European composers whose lives were shortened or otherwise impacted by the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. This is another example of Cedille Records’ practice of resurrecting excellent music that is little remembered. Three of the four composers are known commodities, one is little known.
The quality of these songs and performance is evident from the opening works, three songs by Franz Schreker. Bradey Moore starts “Unendliche Liebe (Endless Love)” with a lovely piano passage over which Ian Koziara provides a soulful sound. The upbeat “Fruhling (Spring)” takes Koziara to the top of his range.
Vítězslava Kaprálová is one of the little remembered composers on this disc. The program notes explain how this female prodigy from Czechoslovakia had already gained notoriety in her home country when her 25-year-old life was cut short from illness in 1940 while living in France. She was there on a musical scholarship, which the Nazis cut short. Her four pieces “Jablko s Klina” allow Koziara and Moore to provide a variety of textures and feelings.
Alexander von Zemlinsky composed an absolute gem, “Turmwächterlied.” Here, Koziara and Moore move from wistful reflection to passionate intensity with one of those melodies that stays with you.
Children’s Stories offers a refreshing approach to story-telling and classical music for the ears of children. Under the direction of Stilian Kirov, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, narrator Michael Sumuel, the Anima—Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus, and ChiArts Chamber Choir give wonderment to stories set to music by Michael Abels and Augusta Read Thomas.
First is Abels’ “Frederick’s Fables,” which is comprised of four stories by Leo Lionni. Narrated with a lordly voice by Michael Sumuel, these stories tell about mice and other animals living in an abandoned farmhouse, with Frederick being the lead character in the first two. As fables do, these offer lessons about various topics, including the benefit of the arts, the importance of humility, the differences between species, and the role of friendship.
Abels backs these fables up with a score that works very well with words being spoken. Most noteworthy is “Theodore and the Talking Mushroom,” which says one and only one word “Twerp.” Abels and Sumuel give it a wonderful life.
Taking a different approach in Gwendolyn Brooks Settings, Thomas put six stories from this long-time Chicago resident’s “Bronzeville Boys and Girls” into an airy choral arrangement. In several of these works, Thomas uses vocal whole notes with interesting intervals on top of rapid orchestration to create fascinating overtones and resonations. At times the children sound angelic, singing the same note as the words change.
This comes through from the opening words, “I shall create.” The second song, “Cythia in the Snow,” opens with the orchestra taking the long notes into lower ranges. Nice contrast is provided by “That Clock is Ticking Me Away,” which opens with the orchestral chorale. The voices soon sing “tick tock, tick tock,” while the percussion bangs away in the background.
In her most recent Cedille release, Rachel Barton Pine returns to her baroque roots. Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli from the late 17th to early 18th Centuries is credited with being the founder of modern violin playing. As she shared in the notes, Pine has been performing Corelli’s music since she was a child.
The 12 sonatas that make up Corelli’s Op. 5 allow Pine to explore a wide variety of sounds and styles over this two-disc release. In each sonata the violin is accompanied by a continuo backing of as many as three instruments, mainly playing bass lines. In a fascinating way, the instrumentation would change even in the middle of a work; the 12 sonatas were played with 24 different ensemble combinations.
Pine turned to John Mark Rozendaal for the violincello and its baroque precursor, viola da gamba. (Rozendaal also provided a thorough biography of Corelli in the notes.) David Schrader played harpsichord and the positive organ, a portable pipe organ popular in early music. Brandon Acker played guitar and its predecessors, archlute and theorbo.
For the first 11 sonatas, Pine used her baroque violin made by Nicola Gagliano in 1770. For the 12th Sonata, the famous “Follia” variations in d-minor, she used the six-stringed viola d’ amore that Gagliano made from the same tree that provided the wood for the violin. The “Follia” variations seem to capture the full panoply of Corelli’s sounds, but all 12 sonatas offer something very enjoyable.
In this CD trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden performs a mixture of contemporary airs from a rarely heard musical combination: solo trumpet and orchestra. In producing the many timbers that can emerge from a trumpet, Bowden is adept at sounding a wide dynamic range for an instrument that can be overpowering. Backing her up is mature playing from the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Allen Tinkham.
The opening work by Chicago native composer/trumpeter James M. Stephenson gives the release its name, The Storyteller. Bowden offers soulful sounds over a lush orchestral background, featuring violin solos from Yvonne Lam and offstage trumpet from David Dash.
Up next is a three-movement Bohemian Queen: Concerto for Trumpet and String Orchestra by Chicago composer Clarice V. Assad, who provided Bowden with an astonishing vehicle to show off intense but subtle feelings. Starting with some tension in “Girl Searching” it moves to idyllic bliss in “The Stroll.” The finale, “Hyde Park Jam,” opens with apprehension but quickly moves into a fast-moving urban scene.
Dash joins Bowden again for Veiled Light for Two Trumpets and String Ensemble by Tyson Ghoston Davis, a work from 2021 commissioned by Bowden and Dash. In addition to a second solo trumpet, this two-movements piece offers interesting orchestration. The slow first movement, “Sospeso, pensive,” has lots of overtones and wispy glissandos in the strings. Overlaying this are distal harmonies from the trumpets. The second movement, “Skittish, marcato,” starts with booming chords, reminiscent of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Vocal music is rarely far from the surface in this year’s batch of Cedille releases. Bowden commissioned transcriptions into trumpet concertos of two works that were originally written as songs. In “Caritas,” Sarah Kirkland Snider used texts from 12th Century composer Hildegard bon Bingen. In “Rosa de Sal,” Reena Esmail used a poem by 20th Century Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda to create a very dreamy trumpet concerto, where a harp plays a major role.
This release raises a big challenge. What is the best way to transfer to CD performance art? In writing Composition as Explanation, David Lang created a series of talking snippets backed up by brief musical passages on various instruments. The libretto used Gertrude Stein’s many words on the subject of composition.
While the occasional musical passages are interesting, the spoken dialogues between them are not, even during the first listen. The subject is not all that interesting, either, and the text is very repetitive.
While it is important to create an archive for historical purposes, this format is dull. Better would have been to craft the musical portions into a suite of some kind, as many composers have done to music originally written to accompany stage plays.