NYFOS (New York Festival of Song) Next continues to astonish even the most sophisticated listeners, most especially with the recent installment, the season-closing “Russell Platt and Friends,” on April 24 at Mary Flagler Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. The series is a breath of fresh air on the scene of serious vocal music and the singers were as brilliant as Russell and his friends. If you want to take the pulse of what’s on the event horizon, NYFOS Next is the way to do it.
The evening began with a brief discussion, as Platt revealed the thought processes of how to pull together the evening dedicated to, quite literally, new music. One of the composers he selected, Colin Jacobsen, provided a World Premiere song for the event, about which you’ll hear more later. The evening was a smorgasbord of diverse works that sparked the listeners’ creativity as well as that of the performers. Platt characterized the evening as a “snapshot of Generation X,” whose composers are a heady combination of reverent and irreverent regarding their approach to the writing of the post-Modern art song. Influences ranging from folk music inspired classical to pure-tone song to the verge of performance art all made this evening a musicological romp and far too short.
The opening set included selections from Platt’s “Paul Muldoon Songs,” settings of poetry begun in 1992, with some completed in 2002. Mischa Bouvier, whom I last heard in Mohammed Fairouz’ “Sumeida’s Song,” had a very different row to hoe, as his beautiful tone illuminated diverse selections, such as “Cuba,” that included musical piano quotes that painted their own pictures under Thomas Sauer’s talented hands, even as Bouvier’s voice colored Muldoon’s words. Bouvier’s voice truly shone in the final selection, “The Avenue,” where the full impact of the end of a relationship is now able to be charted, as it has fallen apart.
Kyle Bielfield had the honor of performing Harold Meltzer’s settings of James Wright’s selections from “Beautiful Ohio.” The poems resonate with me, as Wright seems to be creating poetry about the portion of Ohio that is literally a stone’s throw from West Virginia, and that’s where I spent my college days. When Bielfield began to sing, his smooth tenor caressed Wright’s paean to the state that he loved and didn’t. The emotions Meltzer and Bielfield evoke with the music and the Wright’s lyrics on “Small Frogs Killed on the Highway,” and the image of the final line–a technique for which Wright is famous–of tadpoles dancing on a quarter moon and not yet being able to see what awaits them is both a blessing and a curse, as well as a thought-provoking ending of a song. Followed by the bluesy and urban sound of “Beautiful Ohio” and then the darkly clear-eyed nostalgia of “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,” the songs give Biefield the opportunity to use his soaring, sinuous tenor as he bent the notes to his will. Platt spoke of Brooklyn-born Meltzer as having an urban perspective that portrays the patience required of life in the Midwest so clearly, and the clarity is stunning. Again Thomas Sauer proved himself to be more of a duet partner, rather than accompanist as he feels the music as much as the singers he has partnered.
Lisa Bielawa is a composer and a vocalist whose inspiration during a visit to Prague yielded a very special work literally tailor-made for Carla Kihlstedt, a composer in her own right as well as that rara avis, a singing violinist. Bielawa happened to find a volume of Kafka’s work in English while in Prague, and then another volume when she was a Copland fellow, living and working on Aaron Copland’s estate. The library contains amazing things and the three songs presented were dazzling in their landscape of tone, color and the stretching of both voice and violin to something more than they would usually be together. “A Handful of World,” though, made a huge point in its peregrinations–when we saw an incomplete mixture, a rush to judgment was the true error. Kihlstedt’s pure tone and the match of her voice with her bowing of her violin were exquisite in the Kafka-as-composer mode Bielawa has created. She stretched the limit of Kihlstedt’s vocal and violin technique and Kihlstedt stepped up and vanquished the challenge, even as she celebrated it. “Couriers” was arch and funny and, in character, may even have been ripped from any headline in the last 100 years. “Ghosts” had a literally haunting ending that was an aural version of a positive and negative space sculpture–there were pendant tendrils even after Kihlstedt broke Bielawa’s spell.
Kihlstedt had a spell of her own to weave with her personal and professional collaborator, husband Matthias Bossi on percussion and a remarkable Civil War-era box organ. The work “Paper Prison” takes a stanza of a Robert Louis Stevenson poem as its point of departure and Ms. Kihlstedt composed the music and the remainder of the lyrics. She played both her violin as well as something she called a “violin-trumpet,” also known by the tradename “Strohviol”. The instrument is used in Romania and the Balkans and is a favorite of buskers and musicians and, in this setting, with Kilhstedt’s pure vocal tone, the Strohviol lent an antique feel to the music, as if we were hearing a Victrola recording of the music itself. The texture combined with her clear voice, and Bossi’s slow drum beats and overtone’d deep chords combined for a masala of blue notes, Gypsy violin and sea chanty that seemed a timeless folk opera. The auditory cortex was in a revolving door–modern-vintage-modern-vintage–as the music comes full circle round.
Platt had given us an outline of what the evening would bring in his introduction, but nothing could have prepared the way for Gilda Lyons’ merry tongue in cheek tribute to what it means to live New York-style. “Rapid Transit,” from the Five Borough Songbook, premiered in 2011 and soprano Sarah Wolfson and mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert have tremendously malleable voices that range through scales, tones, dynamics and more to give the feel of Gilda Lyons’ New York subway experience, sans the scent-sory aspect. The delicious frisson of dissonance then release has the same feel of holding-breath at the brakes and squealing to a stop, followed by the mechanical and human exhalation that follows that finish. These women should sing together more widely and frequently: this piece could have been daunting, but sheer joy and intensity burned tiger-bright.
Composer Colin Jacobsen claims to have never written a song prior to the World Premiere composition “To the Roaring Wind” based on a poem by Wallace Stevens. The struggle to find the right word–or words–can be an occupation in itself. Gaissert, accompanied by Sauer, portrayed the Moebius-twist of the process so vividly that her acting was clearly every bit the rival to her singing. With the spoken-word vocalise that Gaissert performed, I couldn’t help but wonder–how would Jacobsen have notated this? The sense of satisfaction, when she found the right word, rang through, rang out, rang true.
The all-too-soon finale of the evening was Platt’s setting of Christina Rossetti’s poem “What Are Heavy,” begun in 1992 and revised in 2012. Michael Barrett played for Wolfson and her strong beautiful soprano, round tones and perfect diction illuminated Rossetti’s words, leaving us with “What are deep? Ocean and truth.”
Platt curated an astonishing program. People who are used to more conventional offerings in either contemporary classical or even more modern-inspired works found much to enjoy in this lively event. Personally, I came away inspired in several ways, most immediately in checking my calendar for the dates when the NYFOS Next series is likely to begin for 2012-2013. Next year, the season will expand to three outings and I can’t wait!
NYFOS will soon begin its 25th season and you won’t want to miss what’s new and what’s on the way, so bookmark www.NYFOS.org soon. Tickets to these events for Moms, Dads and grads make great gifts that give a lifetime of inspiration.