Home » Stories » Russian professor's poetry translations set to Mark Abel's 'The Cave of Wondrous Voice' / Bowdoin

Stories for January 25, 2021

  •

    Angelique Kidjo writes song for imprisoned human rights activist; Nasrin Sotoudeh / NYSMusic
     
    Posted At : January 24, 2021 12:00 AM

    NYSMusic's Andie Chapman writes...... Four-time Grammy winner Angelique Kidjo has often advocated for human rights as she has been a UNICEF ambassador since 2002. Her music is imbued with compassion, and throughout the years she has contributed songs for important causes, such as her contribution song "Leila" for the Enough Project which raised awareness for women's rights in Raise Hope for Congo.    In 2020, the singer and activist recorded the song "How Can I Tell You?" by composers Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty who wrote "Ragtime," "Once on This Island," "Anastasia," and many more notable works. This song was included in a documentary directed and produced by Jeff Kaufman titled Nasrin. Often referred to as the "Nelson Mandela of Iran," Nasrin Sotoudeh fought for human rights in Iran, eventually leading to her arrest in June 2018 for defending women who publicly protested Iran's mandatory hijab law. The government sentenced her to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Nasrin now has COVID-19 and a heart condition, but even from the confines of prison she has continued to challenge the authorities.      READ THE FULL NYSMusic ARTICLE & WATCH THE VIDEO

  • Branford Marsalis' soundtrack of Ma Rainey's studio sessions is an impeccable recreation / The Guardian
     
    Posted At : January 23, 2021 12:00 AM

    The Guardian's Dave Gelly writes....August Wilson's 1982 play, and the 2020 Netflix film, are about a lot more than music, but Gertude "Ma" Rainey ("Mother of the Blues") was a real person, and the action takes place around what was a real recording session. Music, and how it's treated, is the basic metaphor here, so music is an important accompaniment to the story. In this case – like the clothes, the cars and the surrounding scene – it must also persuade us that we are in Chicago in 1927. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis has certainly spared no effort in recreating authentic period sounds.    Photograph: David Lee/AP READ THE FULL Guardian ARTICLE

  • Shai Maestro with WBGO's The Checkout, on being more 'Human'
     
    Posted At : January 22, 2021 12:00 AM

    WBGO'S The Checkout: SIMON RENTNER writes......We've always admired Shai Maestro's fearless approach to music. When he sits down at the piano, especially in an improvisational solo setting, he checks the temperature of a space and lets the music come to him, allowing one idea to flow into another. But he wasn't always that free. On this episode of The Checkout, Maestro remembers a difficult moment on tour with bassist Avishai Cohen and drummer Mark Guiliana - a moment that would shape his career. In the middle of a performance, while playing his tune, the trio took an unexpected detour and he completely freaked out. That meltdown would change his thinking, and approach to music, forever. To hear Maestro tell it, what he became after this experience was more human - which is also the title of his new album, which ECM will release on Jan. 29.  READ THE FULL WBGO: Newark NJ ARTICLE & LISTEN TO THE SEGMENT

  • Jeni Slotchiver - American Heritage takes you to a different world of patience and space / Jazz Weekly
     
    Posted At : January 22, 2021 12:00 AM

    Following the success of the Busoni The Visionary series, Jeni Slotchiver is humbled to introduce something so intimately close to home. With Southern roots of her own, Ms. Slotchiver's debut ZOHO CD release American Heritage is her homage to the legendary composers preserving American folk music and creating anew. What was once familiar, is reborn. Spanning 125 years, from Louis Moreau Gottschalk's The Banjo (ca. 1854-5) to Frederic Rzewski's Down by the riverside (1979), American Heritage presents piano compositions by composers of concert music, inspired by the melodies, dance rhythms, harmonic inventions and various stylistic elements evocative of the American experience. Of the eight composers represented, six are of African descent and two of these are women. There are quotes from spirituals, use of the African American pentatonic scale, the African call and response structure popularized in southern church tradition, polyphonic rhythms of jazz, and the rich, sultry harmonies of blues. With the exception of the rich musical heritage of Indigenous people, the largest and most important American folkloric body of work arrived on American shores with the first enslaved African people.  Jazz Weekly's  George W. Harris writes....Pianist Jeni Slotchiver gives solo interpretations of music from early to late 20th Century, taking you to a different world of patience and space. While classically trained, Slotchiver has a rich blues touch and a bona fide feel for gospel and folk material. Material ranges from a homespun read of "Swanee River" to the spiritual "Down By The Riverside" as well as the folk classic "Shenandoah" but with an arrangement by Keith Jarret. Parlor moods are presented in a collection of pieces from Harry Thacker Burleigh and the genteel pen of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, on "Union" and "The Banjo" while traditional pieces like "Deep River" and even 1967's "Troubled Water" feel like they've both been drawn from the same well. A journey to another world and world view. SEE THE Jazz Weekly PAGE

  • Jane Ira Bloom and Mark Helias improvise together over zoom / NPR: Fresh Air
     
    Posted At : January 21, 2021 12:00 AM

    Soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist Mark Helias come together to create duets discovered in the moment in a way that is rarely heard today with Some Kind of Tomorrow. The long time bandmates, separated by space and time find a way to play in real time with one another and the results are magical. Two master improvisers and composers bring listeners up-close and personal to the first spark of their imaginations at work, recording eleven duet improvisations over the spring, summer, and fall of 2020. The music is raw, authentic, intimate, alive, and unapologetic in its passion. Their sound is deep wood and polished brass recorded with a depth that is hard to describe. They played the music, recorded it, mastered it firsthand and are now making it available to listeners for the first time as a digital download on Bandcamp. Don't miss these fearless jazz explorers as they face the future.   Heard on Fresh Air, here's Kevin Whitehead's piece. LISTEN & READ THE TRANSCRIPT

  • Shunia delivers heart-lifting chants for these troubled times / American songwriter
     
    Posted At : January 20, 2021 12:00 AM

    Shunia is a duo that combines addictive melodies, ancient chants and polycultural rhythms into a sound that feels both new and timeless. Their music captures and conveys deep energies and spirit. The state of "shunia" means stillness, receptivity. Shunia's members, Lisa Reagan and Suzanne Jackson both performed with the Washington National Opera for 20 years before finding continued success in their solo careers. Coming together as Shunia, they combined their influences, inspirations and experiences to create genre-defying music with the power to transform and to connect you to the energy within and around you. It can put you in touch with something as simple as your five senses or as mysterious as the infinite. American Songwriter's NADIA NEOPHYTOU writes......To press play on Shunia's new album of chants is to allow a wave of calm and relaxation to wash over one's whole self. For Lisa Reagan and Suzanne Jackson, who've known each other for 30 years, sharing the gift that's been a major part of their lives with others is the reason they began recording together as the duo Shunia in the first place. "Music in and of itself is such a powerful medium," Reagan tells American Songwriter. "It is the language of our humanity and our souls. We know these mantras are tried and true, and we have personally been chanting them for years." READ THE FULL American songwriter ARTICLE

  • Ed O'Keefe is the CBS news white house correspondent who came to play / 98.7WFMT Q&A
     
    Posted At : January 20, 2021 12:00 AM

    WFMT: Chicago 's Candice Agree writes....From the age of 3, CBS News political correspondent Ed O'Keefe toiled at a keyboard-not in typing, as unintended preparation for his 13 years at the Washington Post, but in studying classical piano in Delmar, a suburb of Albany, NY. Although he loved playing, his interest in current events and politics pulled him into a journalism career. No stranger to Chicago, in 2008, O'Keefe was in Grant Park the night that Barack Obama was elected president. O'Keefe, 37, is about to become a fixture in the White House press room, as he will cover the Biden administration for the TV network he joined in 2018. But he has never left his first passion far behind. He shared some musical memories with us before taking on his new assignment at CBS News as Senior White House & Political Correspondent.    Photo courtesy CBS News) READ Candice Agree's Q&A with Ed O'Keefe.

Top 10 for Jan

  • SIGNUM saxophone quartet :

    Echoes

     An ensemble that attracts rave reviews and sell-out crowds at prestigious venues everywhere from Vienna to New York, the sensational SIGNUM saxophone quartet are now set to present their first Deutsche Grammophon album.
  • The Album Leaf :

    SYNCHRONIC - OMPS

     Milan Records announces the release of SYNCHRONIC (ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK) with music by The Album Leaf.
  • Shai Maestro :

    Human

     In its review of pianist Shai Maestro's leader debut, The Dream Thief, All About Jazz spoke of "a searching lyrical atmosphere, emotional eloquence and communal virtuosity that serves the music.
  • Poor Clare Sisters of Arundel :

    Light for the World

     More than 800 years since they were founded, the Poor Clare Sisters of Arundel – a community of 23 nuns living in the south of England – have found themselves unexpected recording stars.
  • Ilan Eshkeri :

    A Perfect Planet

     Sony Music today announces the January 8, 2021 release of A PERFECT PLANET (SOUNDTRACK FROM THE BBC SERIES) with music by composer ILAN ESHKERI (Stardust, The Young Victoria).
  • Jane Ira Bloom, Mark Helias :

    Some Kind of Tomorrow

     Soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist Mark Helias come together to create duets discovered in the moment in a way that is rarely heard today with Some Kind of Tomorrow.
  • Catalyst Quartet :

    Uncovered Vol. 1 - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

     On Friday, February 5, 2021, GRAMMY Award-winning Catalyst Quartet releases UNCOVERED Volume 1 on Azica Records.
  • Laila Biali :

    A Case of You - LIVE

     SOCAN Music and JUNO Award winner Laila Biali shares an intimate acoustic cover of Joni Mitchell's classic love song, A Case of You, captured live off the floor at Revolution Recording Studios.
  • Max Richter :

    Beethoven - Opus 2020

     Max Richter and Deutsche Grammophon are set to release a brand-new orchestral composition to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birthday.
  • Yo-Yo Ma | Kathryn Stott :

    Comfort and Hope

     Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Kathryn Stott come together again, this time for Songs of Comfort and Hope, set for release on December 11, 2020 on Sony Classical.

Russian professor's poetry translations set to Mark Abel's 'The Cave of Wondrous Voice' / Bowdoin

Posted: May 11, 2020 12:00 AM | By: Admin
Bookmark and Share

The latest album by California-based classical music composer Mark Abel owes a lot to Bowdoin scholar Alyssa Gillespie, chair of the Russian department. "It was a wonderful experience collaborating with Professor Gillespie," he said.

The Cave of Wondrous Voice, released this month on the Delos label, is a collection of chamber music recordings, featuring a song cycle based on four poems by the "great and tragic" twentieth-century Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, translated into English by Gillespie. Abel said he compared Gillespie's translations of Tsvetaeva with others in circulation "and quickly realized that hers were on a very high plane. It's one thing to produce detailed analyses of a writer's work in an academic setting and quite another to render them very poetically and incisively in a language different from the original."

"Mark reached out to me first in February 2019, having read my scholarly book on Tsvetaeva," said Gillespie. "He had a few questions about her, and we pretty quickly decided to collaborate together on the piece he was hoping to compose." Gillespie has been translating Tsvetaeva's poetry for over twenty-five years, picking up several international translation prizes for her translations. For her sabbatical next year, she plans to work on a book-length collection of the poet's verse in translation, alongside several scholarly book projects related to the poetry of Alexander Pushkin. 

The four poems in this particular song cycle were chosen because they provide a good introduction to a poet who still has a "semi-obscure status in America's world of letters," said Abel. "Tsvetaeva's poetic subjects span a vast amount of terrain-from mythology to political upheaval to intense personal relationships to romantic and existential musings (and more). I'm hoping that the cycle on which Professor Gillespie and I collaborated will spur listeners and readers alike to delve further into Tsvetaeva's universe." 

When the Bowdoin campus went into lockdown, Gillespie had been planning a concert in late March with Beckwith Artist in Residence George Lopez, "to consist entirely of song cycles written on the verse of Tsvetaeva and her fellow female Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in both English and Russian." They're hoping to reschedule the concert for sometime next year, she said.

READ THE FULL Bowdoin ARTICLE

Crossover Media Projects with Mark Abel

  • Mark Abel

    The Cave Of Wondrous Voice

    Chamber Music and Songs of Mark Abel

    David Shifrin, clarinet • Carol Rosenberger, piano • Hila Plitmann, soprano  Fred Sherry, cello • Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker, violin Dominic Cheli, piano • Sarah Beck, English horn

    This album sings and dances, with Mark Abel's "colorful blend of styles that serve the emotional nature of each work to bracing and poignant effect" (Gramophone) and further clarifies why Abel is "one of the most interesting figures in American contemporary music" (Pizzicato).

    Abel's idiom eludes easy pigeon-holing-its contours extend from art song to larger forms with orchestra to a full length chamber opera, Home Is a Harbor.

    The program begins with Intuition's Dance, a combination of frolic and dreamy ruminations featuring the incomparable clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Carol Rosenberger. (Together again for the first time since their memorable albums for Delos, recorded in 1984!) Next comes the remarkable Hila Plitmann singing the powerfully moving Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva-the first-ever setting of Tsvetaeva's poetry in English translation. Plitmann is joined by Rosenberger and English hornist Sarah Beck.

  • Mark Abel

    Time and Distance

    The California-based composer Mark Abel, who "employs a colorful blend of styles that serve the emotional nature of each work to bracing and poignant effect" (Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone, August 2016) has released a new recording-his fourth in recent years-entitled Time and Distance on the Delos label. Drawing on a variegated lifetime of artistic, journalistic, political, and poetic endeavors, Mr. Abel has composed five art songs for voice and piano, three of which are based on his own texts, one on a poem by Kate Gale, and one composed to five poems by Joanne Regenhardt. Time and Distance features performances by Grammy Award-winning soprano Hila Plitman; mezzo-sorpano Janelle DeStefano, pianist Tali Tadmor, pianist Carol Rosenberger, Bruce Carver on percussion, and Mr. Abel at the organ. 

  • Mark Abel

    Terrain Of The Heart

    Mark Abel's critically heralded previous release on Delos, the orchestral cycle The Dream Gallery, signaled a radical and culturally relevant new approach to the American art song. With TERRAIN OF THE HEART, Abel takes a fresh look at the idiom while working within the genre's more traditional framework: as a recital vehicle for solo voice and piano. Abel's lyrics leave a lasting impression. They burrow all the deeper into one's consciousness when amplified by his sophisticated musical fusion of classical and rock, aimed at broad-minded listeners – classically couth or not.

    11 NEW  42 Total 
    SYND:     CBC
    Markets include: Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New Orleans, Honolulu
    Online: WGOE, Sanluisobispo.com, MusiClassical, RadioIO, gapplegate

  • Mark Abel

    The Dream Gallery

    American composer Mark Abel's song cycle, The Dream Gallery: Seven California Portraits, will be released by Delos Music digitally March 6 and on CD March 27, 2012. With The Dream Gallery, Abel has written both music and lyrics to a 70-minute work that explores a character-driven psychogeography of modern California, a state that he has been continually fascinated by and sometimes frustrated with over three decades of living there. A former rock musician-producer on the cutting-edge New York scene of the late '70s, Abel shifted careers to become a top journalist in San Francisco. He has devoted himself to composition in recent years, releasing two previous albums featuring a wide array of his "postmodern art songs." For The Dream Gallery, the composer sought out some of California's most talented, sympathetic singers and players to bring his latest creation to vibrant life.

    8 New 'ON' this week: 51 Total
    Direct: Music Choice
    Markets include: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, Berkeley CA, Wichita KS
    Online: Crystal Ball Report, WGOE, Live 365