Paul Moravec, Sanctuary Road, Oratorio Society of New York, Kent Tritle

Paul Moravec (b 1957) chose wisely when he decided to pay homage to William Still for his heroic role as a "conductor" and observer of the Underground Railroad and its secret network. Still helped along the safe transport and eventual freedom of more than 900 fugitive slaves. Moravec has collaborated with librettist Mark Campbell in the resultant Sanctuary Road, An oratorio based on the writings of William Still (Naxos 8.559884).

I note with this review post the world premiere performance and recording from the 2018 Carnegie Hall  debut in release just now on Naxos. It gives our ears a representative and spirited indication of the work. After a number of listens I report in to you on my impressions.

Kent Tritle most capably conducts and directs the Oratorio Society of New York Chorus and Orchestra as they mesh with the five vocalists in their respective solo roles. The proceedings were well recorded. Along with a 20-minute discussion that follows, the performance sequence takes up a full CD. There is much music of interest to be explored.

The oratorio focuses on the dramatic, poetic yet matter-of-fact musical setting of Mark Campbell's libretto, which in turn takes its cue from Afro-American abolutionist William Still's detailed and moving documentary writing. Still left us an invaluable and moving record of the circumstances, participants and daunting challenges faced by the brilliantly heroic facilitators of the often perilous operations of the Railroad from the beginning-to-mid 19th century.

Still as an important Underground Railroad "conductor" himself  was eyewitness to a good bit of it from his Philadelphia location. We hear in the oratorio testimonial texts inspired by his writings (principally The Underground Railroad Records) on the biographical situations of those involved, the bold and often brilliant disguises and ruses that facilitated escape to the North, and the extraordinary courage of all involved.

Musically all this takes place in a series of vignettes that alternately collage myriads of participant names, circumstances, places with contrasting, more detailed scene descriptions, including those experiences Still himself had documenting and facilitating while reflecting on it all.

Ultimately a kind of deserved  triumphal "huzzah" concludes the oratorio with the amassed cast.

This is musically a kind of tonal, middle-of-the-road styling, through-composed throughout without vestiges of either Minimalist repetition or High Modernist harmonic edginess. Yet that is certainly not to say that the music is somehow generic. It is not. It is filled with individual and memorable moments more with a black-and-white musical-documentary presence than with multi-technicolor sound emanations. There is a plainness at times that suits the need to recognize the sheer unvarnished drama of the period and its search to achieve abolutionist justice.

The power and clarity of the scoring of vocal and orchestral parts prevails and in the end wins the day.

So I must say there is a kind of rightness to the way the musical content lays out. It is extremely well crafted in musical terms and it sets off the text so that the experience is commemorative, rightly honoring, remembering but of course still providing a history-as-art experience. I come away with a feeling of satisfaction, of approval. You should hear this.

Ian Krouse. Armenian Requiem, soloists, VEM String Quartet, Tziatzan Children's Choir, Lark Master Singers, UCLA Philhamonia, Neal Stulberg

As a composer in the Naxos American Classics Series, Jan Klouse (b. 1956) comes center stage with his epic and dramatic Armenian Requiem (Naxos 8.559846-47 2-CDs). It is a work to meditate with solemn resolve on the centenary of the genocide of Armenians in 1915. It is music that comes out of the Requiem-specific Armenian liturgical chants, and does so with a spectacular assemblage of fine vocal soloists along with Ruben Harutyunyan on duduk,  Jean Libdemann and Bobby Rodriguez on trumpets, Christoph Bull on organ, the VEM String Quartet, Tziatzan Children's Choir, the Lark Master Singers and the UCLA Philharmonia, all under the capable direction of Neal Stulberg.

Such an ambitious gathering fills an hour-and-a-half of our time with a sprawling expression that goes back to classic sacred music oratorios surely, but too has a mindfulness of parallel Modernity in the landmark Passions of Penderecki and Part, and other advanced New Music expression, here tempered by an Armenian modality lurking in the shadows of the expressed, there without calling undue attention to itself.

And then too there is Britten's War Requiem, which the Naxos cover info avows as an influence, an important one. To quote, Krouse was inspired by that work to fashion "a poignant meditation on loss couched in a marriage of Western and Armenian forms" to offer "both conciliation and hope." I concur that this is the case as I listen to the music with concentrated and increasingly sympathetic attention.

The music is not precisely cutting edge not is it a backwards movement, yet if you set that concern aside you hear a veritable spring garden of musical delights, seriously miened, soberly comported yet hopeful, not without beauty and drama.

It is a monumental endeavor that pays dividends by close listening. You might want to make this a part of your contemporary collection, especially you who want to enrich your experience of Sacred Music.

I do recommend this.

John A. Carollo, Music from the Ethereal Side of Paradise

In John A Carollo we have the very living composer, resident of Hawaii, the fashioner of New Music that I consistently find worthwhile and disarmingly interesting. There have been a fair number of releases on Navona and other labels in the last few years and I have covered most of them (type his name in the search box above for the relevant reviews). Now there is a new one and it is one of his best. It is appropriately titled Music from the Ethereal Side of Paradise (Navona 6148).

The program is an interesting mix of ensemble configurations--string orchestra, guitar and violin, solo violin, guitar, choir, solo flute. Each work has its own personality, partly urged on by the varying potentials of the instrumental configurations, partly because the composer is firmly in a Modernist yet variably oriented camp. In the end there is always something personal and original that emerges from his work. But that can span a wide range of possibilities, sub-stylistically speaking.

Hearing his music involving guitar is a treat because he has an idiomatic vision of what the instrument can do and so too the guitar stands out as well as blends nicely with other instruments as called for, specifically the violin in this case. Christian Saggese performs the works on here that call for solo guitar. The "Romantic Passione Suite" is handled by the familiar, dedicated and talented Duo 46 (Matt Gould on guitar, Beth Schneider on violin). Christian sounds like he is made for the parts he plays. The corresponding "Guitar Prelude No. 3 - The Tai Chi Set" plus the "Guitar Etudes Nos. 7 & 9" are high points of the program with an inventive flow that stand out as quite noteworthy.

But there is lots of very good music to hear on this program, well performed and very Carollo-ian! I very much find the "Music for Choir" to my liking and so too the string orchestra works "Awakenings" and "Bright Stillness." Yet the small chamber works serve to separate out and contrast the larger ensemble works from and with the other. And so we also hear the musical sense and feeling highs of "Metamorphosis No. 3 for Solo Violin," and the "Metamorphosis No. 13 for Solo Flute."

It is all good, all worth hearing, all primo examples of what one might dub "Middle Modernism," or in other words New Music that treads a middle ground between eclectic Tonality and Avant dashings into outer space.

Carollo occupies his own turf consistently and originally. This is an excellent example of his way for those unfamiliar and an excellent addition to the collections of those familiar! Kudos!

Steve Holtje, A Man Full of Days, Soundtrack, with Black Crystal F_ck Wolf and Peckinpah

What we have at hand today is the soundtrack of the film A Man Full of Days (MechaBenzaiten MB 15). It features primarily the music of Steve Holtje. In full disclosure I count Steve as a friend and associate, mostly though our ongoing dialog on the internet and in the course of his tenure managing ESP records. But that is a separate matter from his music, which I would not be posting on did I not find it very interesting and engaging.

The 15 compositions of Holtje are supplemented by two from Black Crystal F_ck Wolf, one by Bruce McKenzie (Peckinpah) and a brief 1930 orchestral work by Levko Revutsky and Vyacheslav Ovchinnikow. The additional pieces do not disrupt the mood of Holtje's music, but serve to enhance it.

Steve has a definite penchant for the atmospherically ambient. There are a number of electroacoustic movements that set a powerfully inner-directed mood and have nicely realized sound color-texture traits. There are solo piano works that add onto Satie's "Gymnopedies" in good ways; there are also pieces that utilize some aetherial organ sounds and one that includes a women's chorus.

Through it all we have some extraordinarily interesting modern/post-modern mood-tone poetry. Holtje proves to be an especially effective sound sculptor in these movement-works. I found myself increasingly gravitating towards the music as I listened more and more.

On the basis of this soundtrack album I do find Steve Holtje to be a composer to watch. This is a very nice introduction to his music and I certainly hope there will be more for us to appreciate in the years to come. He has an adventurous yet also a very engaging way.

Recommended listening!