Tom CIPULLO (b.1960)
Why I Wear My Hair Long [1.21]
Saying Goodbye [2.08]
The Pocketbook [4.24]
How To Get Heat Without Fire [4.48]
Lori LAITMAN (b.1955)
The Hour [2.12]
Money [1.52]
Lee HOIBY
Manners [3.06]
Filling Station [3.38]
Insomnia [3.38]
Melanie MITRANO
Your Little Voice [1.48]
Time for Tea [2.05]
Bona Petite [3.17]
Beth ANDERSON (b.1949)
Lullaby [1.37]
Beauty Runs Faster [0.40]
Gene PRITSKER
Perirrhanterium [3.06]
Allan JAFFE
We Are Never Alone [3.36]
Paul MORAVEC (b.1957)
I Could Call You Up [3.11]
Main Street USA [3.44]
David DEL TREDICI
(b.1937)
New Year’s Eve [4.07]
For those who admire
contemporary poets, living composer-pianists
and adventurous stylistic cross-currents
this disc may prove attractive. The
focus is American, the composers a mix
of well known (Moravec, Del Tredici),
increasingly fêted (Laitman) and
more obscure (Cipullo, Hoiby, Jaffe
amongst them). The singer is also a
composer and proves venturesome in accommodating
these differing musical perspectives
– art, stage, jazz – into her performances
and in enlisting a number of the composers
to add their imprimatur by accompanying
here. For the record we hear Cipullo,
Laitman, Hoiby, Moravec and Del Tredici.
Soprano Melanie Mitrano doesn’t manage
to do a George Henschel and accompany
her own singing of her own songs.
Her diction is very
good – some American sopranos of far
greater repute would do well to listen
to her – and her consonants are crisp
and decisive. Her instincts are finely
honed and everything she does sounds
appropriately musically. This is no
trudge through indigestible settings.
None of the composers cleave to the
far-out or to audience-baiting asperities.
Cipullo writes an amusing setting of
The Pocketbook (even shouting
out from the keyboard) but reserves
greatest weight for the most harmonically
complex setting, How To Get Heat
Without Fire which is also the darkest
textually and takes the singer very
high. I’ve reviewed Lori Laitman’s two
Albany discs on this site and the brace
here are new to me; Money is
a decidedly theatrical affair and one
can imagine it off-Broadway.
Lee Hoiby does well
to set Elizabeth Bishop, an iconic American
poet but a difficult one to set successfully.
He catches the interrogative catch in
the Filling Station and elsewhere
presents a tumbling motif to underscore
the fears of Insomnia. Manners
is also delightfully clip-clop. I’d
welcome a disc devoted to his settings.
Mitrano sets a delightful and very romantic
Time for Tea and even quotes
the Godfather theme in Bona
Petite. Beth Anderson’s Beauty
Runs Faster is a vampy 1950s pop
number and delicious, though her setting
of Auden’s Lullaby ("Lay
your sleeping head") is a damp
squib, unfortunately.
Pritsker’s Perirrhanterium,
to words by George Herbert, was
originally written for "soprano,
baritone, two rappers and Samplestra"
I know what rappers are but I’ve never
encountered a Samplestra. Here the performance
is modified for overdubbed two sopranos
and there are samples from diverse sources
– Handel, Charles Mingus, African drumming
and the like. I’d like to say groovy
but I can’t. It’s poor stuff. Allan
Jaffe’s sole example is from an opera,
Moravec contributes a bold show tune
and Del Tredici comes on all Liszt-like
in his sole song.
Some misses here but
quite a few hits. I think Hoiby is someone
to watch. He has breadth and an unpretentious
but clever colouristic sense. All the
texts are provided, the recorded sound
is excellent and the recital very worthwhile.
Kudos to Mitrano for this and to Capstone
as well.
Jonathan Woolf
