Search - Tom Cipullo, Daron Hagen, Libby Larsen :: New American Song Cycles

Some Excellent Songs; Performances That Try One's Patience

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 07/16/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I yield to no one in my respect and admiration for tenor Paul Sperry's service to contemporary American song-writing. I have heard him in live recitals more times that I can count because of this dedication to the furtherance of songs by American composers. He has commissioned and premièred innumerable songs from upwards of thirty American composers. Further, he has such excellent diction that he has served American poets as well, since one can understand almost everything he sings without reference to a printed text. Never blessed with a beautiful voice, he has managed his meager vocal endowment with brains, guts and art. The songs on this CD deserve to heard and one expects they might not have been heard at all if it weren't for Sperry's efforts. Still, the time has come for him to stop singing. The voice has of late become too much of a chore to listen to; he too often sings well under pitch especially in his upper range, and when singing above a mezzo-forte the voice too often becomes a squawl.



As to the music recorded here, some of the songs are really quite enjoyable and one can only hope that others will take them up. I'm sure that is Sperry's hope, too; he certainly has given his time, effort and money to promote this kind of music, including several recordings on the Albany label. On this disc I'd single out the witty songs of Daron Hagen, set to laugh-out-loud funny poems by Alice Wirth Gray. Sample text from 'Why We Have Cats': "That bitch, the woman/who lived next door,/took it on the lam/to Arizona and left/five cats...What did she think life was: a Learning Experience?" Hagen's music underlines the humor in tonal but unexpected harmonies. Libby Larsen's song cycle 'My Antonía,' gently set to words from the Willa Cather novel, traces changes in the landscape over a year's time. Sample: from 'Prairie Spring' - "The larks...singing straight at the sun." Paul Moravec's 'Vita Brevis,' set to lyrics of Wordsworth, James Agee, Yeats, Anonymous and Mr Moravec himself, illustrates the cycle's envoi by Carlyle, 'One life: a gleam of time between two eternities.' The music, to my ears, is a generic and unmemorable. Paul Cipullo's 'Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House,' to poems by the current U.S. poet laureate, Billy Collins, is set to delectable post-impressionist Rorem-esque music. Sperry underlines Collins's felicitous turns of phrase [e.g. in 'Flames,' about Smokey the Bear: 'He is sick of dispensing/warnings to the careless,/the half-wit camper,/the dumbbell hiker.'] which are mirrored slyly in Cipullo's accompaniment. In the cycle's title song, Cipullo unexpectedly and wittily quotes the Scherzo of Beethoven's First Symphony. Sperry is accompanied expertly at the piano in each song cycle by its composer, except for the Larsen cycle where the pianist is Margo Garrett.



In summary, buy this CD for the mostly worthwhile songs, and try to ignore the difficulties with Sperry's vocal estate.



TT=59:37



Scott Morrison"