Rising Tides and Dark Blue Nights
I tend to be most comfortable with dead people. Admittedly they don’t make for the best company, but in my professional life I tend to find they’re the most convenient of clients.1 More to the point, whether it’s my choice of reading material2 or my musical tastes, I’m usually more at home when the writer or composer has been securely in the ground for a century or so.
All of this is to say that, having spent two of the last seven nights listening to music by composers who are not only still alive but, in a few cases, alarmingly younger than me, I’m doing my best to try new things. Last Saturday’s offering of choral music from Modern Sound Collective was a youthful shot in the arm, while Tuesday night provided an evocative mixture of the 20th and 21st centuries at Koffler Arts with in a dark blue night featuring soprano Sara Schabas and pianist Isabelle David.
Modern Sounds from Concreamus
Presented by Concreamus choir, Modern Sound Collective’s Rising Tide concert at Calvin Presbyterian Church featured a program of fresh new music by contemporary composers and performed by host of young artists. Some of the composers were actually members of the choir, and at least three were in the audience. I was quite impressed by the music and the concert was certainly a good proof of concept for MSC’s mission to build community and lift up emerging artists.
Most of the music was organized into pairs whose themes complimented each other quite well. The first set, “Lonely Cloud” by India Gailey and “My Lighthouse” by Soroosh Kahmenyipour, shared a certain elusive and airy energy. While I felt as if the first piece’s solemn and pulsing sound left a kind of ethereal residue behind it, “My Lighthouse” picked up on this uncertainty with a probing, pushing and pulling feeling before finally resolving into a satisfying place of warmth and stability. I will note that the second piece also featured the choir blowing to create the sound of wind: I’m not entirely sure if that worked for me but it certainly helped to evoke the elements.
A pair of pieces from Kai Young Chan were next in the program, and portrayed two very different stages of life. First came “A Chrysalis Tale” which gave soaring voice to a moment of transformative potential: its text refers to a tiny butterfly, but it plainly packs a punch.3 A morose counterpoint followed in the Cantonese language “Life is But a Dream”, which was an almost haunting reflection of time’s passage and the sense of loss that inevitably comes with aging.4
Again I found that “Too Still for Dreams” by Evan Hammell and “Far and Away” by Sean P. McIntyre were well matched. While Hammell’s piece represented a soul seeking for a kind of communion with the spirit of the woods, and sounded appropriately deep and woodsy at times, it does not offer a tidy feeling of deliverance: Instead it comes to a plaintive conclusion in which the hope of connection seems unresolved. The dreamy “Far and Away”, in turn, provided a soothing balm to follow it up. Thus we were granted a satisfying resolution before the intermission.
Probably the liveliest portion of the night came upon the choir’s return with “A Song About Rain”, which also happened to be the only one featuring drums. The music by Sami Anguaya was decidedly catchy and, if anyone had lost their focus during intermission, it certainly got us keyed back in.
“These Earths” by Andrew James Clark had a rather more deliberate sound to it, which suited its topic of trying to resolve the disconnect we often feel with so much remote and digital communication. At this point of the night I also got to add something to my vocabulary as the lyrics included the word “interdigitation”5… I have to imagine it’s difficult to make that one sound melodic. Tyrese Walters’ “The Swallows” was less restrained and more emphatic. No less emphatic were his remarks beforehand: these highlighted how his work is inspired by his experience with musical education, and conveys a message of its importance in the face of continual neglect and disregard.
The final pair brought us back again to the theme of separation and connection. Stephanie Martin’s “Weavings” sought for reconciliation and did indeed weave its way to a rich and peaceful conclusion. The final piece, pianist Nicholas Wanstall’s “The Hour of Separation”, featured that instrument prominently and added a pleasant texture along with the choral harmonies around it. Throughout the evening the music had a genuinely diverse sound to it, so MSC is to be commended for its efforts to bring this kind of programming to life.
Upon review, I admit, the living may indeed have something to offer.
A Long Dark Night From Vienna to New York
Before I’d even left my office on Tuesday en route to Koffler Arts for in a dark blue night, I was already hearing high praise of the Yiddish language. At the mere mention of the fact that I was going to be hearing Yiddish songs at a recital, a coworker was only too happy to inform me what a wonderfully clever, creative, and adroit language it was: much more so than English of course. He next bemoaned how unfortunate it is that the number of Yiddish speakers has dwindled over time. I have never met nor spoken to composer Alex Weiser,6 but I have to imagine that these are more or less sentiments that he would get behind, considering both his role at YIVO and his choice of subjects for the song cycle I found myself listening to that evening.
in a dark blue night was the centrepiece of Tuesday’s recital. It consists of five songs, entitled “Evening”, “Broadway”, “Like the Stars in Heaven”, “Golden Honey” and “Night Reflex”. Each song is a setting of Yiddish poetry that was written by Jewish immigrants to New York in the first half of the 20th century. More reactions to follow, but the overall sensation I got from the songs was one of ambivalence: Hopeful, yes, but also restless and accompanied by something I’m close to calling longing. I suppose that’s always part of the immigrant experience. There is inevitably something left behind when coming to a new country, no matter how optimistic the move might be.
Before getting to Weiser, however, Sara Schabas and Isabelle David took us through a collection of earlier music from a group of Viennese composers: Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Viktor Ullmann, Alma Mahler, Alexander Zemlinsky and Erich Korngold. In between the songs there was also occasional commentary from narrator Robin Elliot. The reason for this choice of repertoire quickly became apparent during his opening remarks after a rendition of Berg’s “Nacht”. These various composers had lived such interconnected lives in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, but by the time of the Second World War’s outbreak none of them remained in the city and most of those who survived7 found their way to America. That community of artists had been shattered, and left to find more fertile ground elsewhere. Their work thus provides a suitable prelude to the poetry that Alex Weiser has brought back to life.
Fitting for that historical context, I found that the first half of the program had a tone that straddled deep effusive feeling on the one hand, and a kind of discordant precarity on the other. One was left with a feeling that things were positive, but that whatever happiness was being expressed was not going to last. To point to but one striking example, Alma Mahler’s “In meines Vaters Garten” struck that note of ambivalence again: seemingly bucolic but with something creeping underneath it. Thus it was a bit of a relief when Korngold’s Shakespearean “It was a lover and his lass”,8 rather less conflicted, wrapped up the first set of songs on a jocular high note.
I found that Sara Schabas boasted both a potent sound and an emotive physical performance that really enhanced the emotional thrust of the evening throughout. Come the second set an armchair was placed in front of the piano and, seated, she channeled her inner lounge singer.9 That added a little something to the ambiance as well.
It is perhaps an obvious remark that the songs in Weiser’s song cycle had a nicely organic flow to them with one following naturally after another. The sun rests in “Evening” (words by Morris Rosenfeld) with sweet and soothing sound. Next, evening blooms in “Broadway, Evening” (Anna Margolin) which brought in a bit of a gentle bustle. Here an animated street scene10 is contrasted with an internal sense of longing. Both the composition and the performers managed to maintain that delicate balance without tipping over into something maudlin.
Once night had set in, “Like the Stars in Heaven” (Naftali Gross) emphasized that conflict between the bright and noisy city and the dark blue night above (this is the poem from which Weiser drew his title). In spite of having its more serene moments this middle song was especially stirring. Having observed illuminated towers, the next song “Golden Honey” (Celia Dropkin) turns its attention to those windows like a honeycomb producing so much golden fruit: it’s a compelling image and came with a more hopeful sound, but again there was an uncertainty I couldn’t quite shake. “Night Reflex” (Reuben Iceland) seemed to drive all that restless energy home into a tempestuous but decisive finale.
Another thing that stuck with me about this music was how I felt it conjuring up images of that interwar New York of a century past: though certainly a contemporary work, something in its sound and texture felt very much of that time and place. After a brief pause “Marietta’s Lied” from Die Tote Stadt finished off the scheduled program on a particularly lovely note.11 Robin Elliot’s remarks at this juncture reminded us that Korngold was only one of many Jewish artists and musicians of the time, refugees from Europe, who left a vibrant and lasting artistic legacy in North America.
Retrospectives aside, however, I must again concede that these living artists are leaving quite an impression themselves.
Full disclosure: Lest you think that I’ve abandoned those esteemed old dead composers, I did also spend a night at the TSO for Gustav Mahler’s12 9th Symphony last Thursday. It was just about enough to make me melt into my seat. I was also happily able to share the evening with a new friend13 thanks to my good luck winning a pair of tickets during Opera Revue’s OperaMania show back in November. So I’d better take a moment to plug their next show in May. Anyway, that’s all I’m going to be writing about the TSO for the moment.
In case I haven’t mentioned this lately for my new subscribers, I’m a trust and estate lawyer and in my current role I mainly act as a professional trustee and executor. Before law school I was a historian, so you might say I traded one version of sorting through dead people’s papers for another. So far I have not had the pleasure of running into any spectral figures whilst visiting a deceased client’s home, though if that sounds interesting you may feel free to revisit my post about The Woman in Black from December.
Currently shuffling between Milton, Mary Shelley and Thomas Mallory, if you were wondering.
I was tempted to try to repurpose Shakespeare here with some “Though she be but little, she is fierce”, but it simply will not do.
Oof, that midlife crisis is just bearing right down on me, isn’t it?
Essentially the interlocking of fingers, or of something resembling fingers.
Born 1989 and thus not much younger than me but still distressing that he’s such an established composer.
Berg had died in 1935, and Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.
This occasions my second footnote reference to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Elliot noted that Korngold came to America in 1934 (and thus made a timely exit from Austria) to work on Max Reinhardt’s film adaptation of the play.
Yes, Sara, I borrowed the lounge singer line from your Instagram story but I’m also giving you credit so no hard feelings, right?
Not to be confused with Street Scene. That’s an entirely different German-Jewish-American composer who arrived in the 1930s.
Though we were also treated to an encore of “I’ve Got Rhythm” for good measure
First of Alma’s three husbands!
New friends are themselves an almost magical occurrence in my nearly-forties, but I actually seem to have made one or two recently... This is either proof that focusing more time and energy on the arts has paid dividends, or it is the work of fairies. Who can say?