Cosmos and Well-Charted Waters – The Boston Musical Intelligencer

Soprano Rose Hegele and pianist Julia Scott Carey introduced “From the Cosmos to the Soul: A Celebration of Ladies’s Music” at Illuminate Ladies’s Music Digital Stay-Stream Wednesday afternoon.

Their mission to illume the maze of ten ladies composers extra realistically supplied an hour-long surroundings the place sampling was the order of the day. That had each its benefits and downsides. On the one hand, Hegele and Carey graciously allowed the music to talk for itself, presenting solely the titles and composers on the display screen. And on the opposite, the multifarious electronics and kinds recalled Gunther Schuller’s evaluating the multi-directional expeditions of the 20^th century to that of a rudderless ship.

That these composers got “voice” by two fully dedicated performers alone would possibly nicely have put the ship again heading in the right direction. And whereas every work on this system exhibited a variety of navigational abilities, all opted to cross well-charted waters.

Younger, enterprising Boston-based musicians Hegele and Carey aren’t any newcomers to the native scene, incomes their levels from Eastman and Boston Conservatory of Music at Berklee and from Harvard and New England Conservatory respectively. The enclave, Illuminate Ladies’s Music, seems to be of latest naissance, its web site but to be crammed out.

An oft-exploring gaze of Hegele and a masked Carey weren’t the one options making a match. Their eager musicianship and dedication caught consideration. All in all, clean crusing for the duo who had clearly amply ready for his or her dwell streaming hour with no likelihood of going again for edits. Nonetheless-life videography helped as anchor.

Sabrina Peña Younger’s “Mild” from Creation Oratorio for soprano and electronics trusted on phrases, at instances hanging onto lengthy notes for expressive moments. Freely turning electronics performed the accompanist’s function.

Anne Phillips’s “Why Religion Abides,” “Romancing Ketchikan” and “An Enduring Imbalance” from An Alaskan Trilogy delivered heat reminiscences and nostalgia as in an American tune custom acquainted to many. For these, clear diction all through was wanting.

Mari Kotskyy’s “Winter Track” fired up an early 20^th century storm and maybe an icy coronary heart beneath Carey’s deftness.

Kamala Sankarm’s “Ololyga” for vox and electronics disclosed the composer as psycholinguist, “why can we select the phrases we do…what are the phrases right here?” Electronically altered voices pronounced an indecipherable background—the sub-consciousness, maybe. At her greatest, Hegele pivoted from pitch-less plosives and guttural sounds to a spacy singing that allowed for a liftoff.

Svjetlana Bukvich’s “Tattoo” from Inside Designs introduced collectively soprano, piano and electronics tainted with classical and pop designs. Sluggish piano chording in main and minor underpropped movie-like vocal drama from a sotto voce “if I can not love you” to an impassioned “I like you so,” electronics furnishing an exclamation level.

Margaret Bonds’s settings of poems of Edna Saint Vincent Millay at instances took to anticipated melodrama.

Sungji Hong’s improvisatory “Track of the Bell” recast piano tremolos right into a clanging bell.

Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s “The Window” allowed Hegele’s low register to glow by way of quietly gonging electronics.

Mason Bynes’s “The Home” sounded out affecting melodic reminiscences.

Hegele and Carey responded sensitively to Beata Moon’s folkish “Time to Mirror,” rounding out their cosmic-to-soul coursing.

David Patterson, Professor of Music and former Chair of the Performing Arts Division at UMass Boston, was recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award and the Chancellor’s Distinction in Instructing Award. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen in Paris and holds a PhD from Harvard College.  He’s theauthor of 20 Little Piano Items from Across the World (G. Schirmer).  www.notescape.net