Composer’s Voice Concert Review By Jack Crager
Originally Published By: Ones, Twos & Threes
The February 8 Composer’s Voice Concert at Jan Hus Church is a tour-de-force of intimate performances, showing the magic that can be brewed up by solo, duet, and trio combinations of distinctive voices. Curated by composer and pianist David Wolfson, the concert features an eclectic group of musicians on vocals, piano, cello, saxophone, tuba — and various and sundry sound effects.
For the Composer’s Voice trademark Fifteen Minutes of Fame, Andrew White serves as curator and performer, using a combination of his rich baritone voice and experimental noises to demonstrate the synergy between music and poetry. This begins with the first piece, “For I am Persuaded” by Christopher Wicks, in which a piercing bell punctuates a melodious reading of the Biblical passage of Romans 8:38. The intellectual bent continues with Casey Rule’s “At Stratford-Upon-Avon,” set to a poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich consecrating Shakespeare’s gravesite, and José Jesus de Azevedo Souza’s “Symphony of the Sea,” drawing on a poem by Alwye and incorporating dramatic handclaps and soaring wind noises. Michael McFerron’s “Ceremony” adds a mysterious ringing bowl and otherworldly chants to the mix. George Brandon’s “Brief Glimpses of Mystery, No. 4: Drunk All the Time” shifts things into an existentialist ramble, while Amanda McCullough’s “The Clock Strikes One The Just Struck Two” adds a ringing tone made by a finger on the edge of a wine glass, set to a somber poem by Emily Dickinson. Later a sense of levity arrives in David Bohn’s “Private Song,” an interplay of foot-stomps and hand-claps over nonsense “zoom-zigga-zoo” scatting; and Juan María Solare’s “Your Check is in the Mail” playfully turns that phrase into a series of puns. Doug Davis’s “Desire” draws on a philosophical treatise by Mabel Collins, while Stephen Stanziano’s “Psalm 23” emotionally conveys the famous “Lord is My Shepard” psalm. David Wolfson’s “Epoxy Margaret” rolls the title phrase off the tongue in approximately three dozen playful ways; this gives way to the meditative “Serenade” by Arthur Gottschalk. Closing out the set is Jonathan B. McNair’s “Oh Karma, Dharma, Pudding and Pie,” in which Philip Appleman’s humorous poem gets a lively foot-stomp-and-hand-clap rendition. By the time Andrew White delivers the final punchline, “Teach the believers how to think,” it’s clear that this set has done just that.
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