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Amanda Sweet
Bucklesweet Media
347-564-3371
amanda@bucklesweetmedia.com
Amanda Sweet
Bucklesweet Media
347-564-3371
amanda@bucklesweetmedia.com
Mark Abel is a former rock musician ... who has bravely chosen to join an endangered species: He is a modern composer of serious music. "Serious," however, does not mean "atonal" or "boring" or "hard to listen to" in his case. His most recent release, The Dream Gallery, is extremely beautiful, with haunting melodies and lyrics sung by world-class vocalists. Mark describes his compositions as "postmodern art songs." I have heard nothing quite like them.
-- Charles Platt, BoingBoing.net
This album, packed with elaborate, painterly compositions and lustrous opera vocals, is definitely a tour de force. The lyrics proffer detailed, wistful memories associated with various California cities.
-- Rachel Swan, East Bay Express, Berkeley, Ca.
Well, this is quite the unique piece of art that just might succeed where others have failed. A former New York/New Jersey music producer from 30 years ago since decamped to journalism in San Francisco, Abel ventures into song cycle territory with classical overtones painting his portrait of California. With the pop shadings of Andy Webber, the art rock sensibilities of David Ackles, a certain Broadway theatricality and chops that let him know how to get where he wants to go, the result is an ambitious work that doesn’t fail in making you sit up and pay attention. A must-hear kind of date for those looking for a cinematic listening experience, Abel hits it out of the park and slays others who have tried harder and had a longer reach to waste. Killer stuff.
-- Chris Spector, Midwest Record (blog)
Mr. Abel has composed his own lyrics, which truly give a strong unity of vision to his composition; the texts meld perfectly with the music, and they convey a wide range of issues and behavior patterns. Which in his own words range from “big-city swagger, elitist conceits and the struggle of immigrants to betrayal, racial scape-goating and environmental devastation.”
This is a major new American song cycle, which is going to be much discussed and weighed by musicologists and critics in the coming months. I believe it is a recording you will enjoy and want to own, and if you have ever lived in California for any length of time, as I did in the 1980s, the music will take you there once again. You might even experience what is often called … Déjà vu!
The music does indeed have the weight and sophistication of “classical music,” but I do not hear the rock influence in any strong way. To me the sound is more of what I would call “New Age.” The guitars and percussion are there to be sure, but there is also much use of the harp and the strings, with very little if any use of the “in your face” punch of rock and roll. All to the better for my tastes. The cycle employs the gamut of classical voices (soprano, mezzo, contralto, tenor, baritone, and bass, sorry … no countertenor) and all of the singers perform most admirably, as does the La Brea Sinfonietta under the fine direction of Maestra Sharon Lavery.
I enjoyed this song cycle much more than I expected. I found it profound and compelling in many ways, and I was enticed to multiple listenings. I have placed it on the shelf next to my recordings of Leonard Bernstein, Elvis Costello and Kurt Weill.
Gallery begins with "Helen" from Los Angeles, sung by Mary Jaeb. It's a grim note of despair, disillusion, and loneliness about a woman caught in the upward spiral of the American dream until it all comes tumbling down -- the years of marriage, the child, the husband who finds a younger companion. Still, thinks Helen, there is always a new day. Shades of Gone with the Wind, yet, sadly, without Scarlett's firm resolve actually to do something to improve her situation.
"Todd" from Taft, sung by David Marshman, continues the reproachful trend as he describes a town built on hope, a town now derelict, a ghost of its former self, ravaged by exploiters. Then there's "Naomi" from Berkeley, sung by Janelle DeStefano. Naomi is a smug Berkeleyite who looks down on those without her knowing understanding of the world, those who just don't get it, yet she is a woman who clearly feels something may be just as wrong with her as with the people she faults.
And so it goes, the singing uniformly informed, soaring, penetrating, affecting as the situation demands. The orchestral support tries to remain unobtrusive, although it does occasionally seem to overpower the narrative. Most of the sentiments are easy enough to identify with, especially "Carol" of San Diego (Delaney Gibson), a go-getter with an empty life filled to the brim with the nothingness she so cherishes. Empty people, empty lives, empty dreams. The series ends with one person, "Adam" of Arcata (Tom Zohar), who chooses probably to leave the state for lands unknown. Anywhere but what he sees as a wasteland.
… These are not flattering pictures of Californians, and the easy knock against them is to say that anybody can condemn, criticize, and denounce. Yet inherent in all the bitter sarcasm are pointers to happiness. Recognizing a problem, after all, is the first step toward solving it.
The singing and ensemble work in Gallery are spot on, and the content is readily accessible. … Using different singers for each song helps to create and communicate different moods … , and the songs do have a certain magnetic appeal despite their apparent uniformity of approach. Then, too, if everyone found these tunes winning or engaging, maybe they wouldn't be classical anymore, would they? Maybe they would be pure pop. It's kind of a vicious circle, blurring the lines further between what is classical and what is popular music.
Each song is based on the perspective of one character, after whom the songs are named. For Richmond, the main character is Lonnie, an older African American man who has lived in Richmond for most of his life. Abel himself lived in Richmond for about 20 years and he said Lonnie is a composite character of many people he met.
“There’s nothing that I made up in terms of sentiments in that piece,” Abel said. “It’s all stuff I heard out of the mouths of real people, and I have to agree with a lot of it.”
Singer Carver Cossey performs the vocals on “Lonnie,” which sounds like rock-meets-Broadway-meets-classical. The piece chronicles the rush to work in the shipyards during World War II and the economic depression that followed. Lonnie lives in Richmond through the Black Panther riots in the 1960’s (“Some young fools and Panthers tore up MacDonald, the flames gutting doorways and dreams. But no Phoenix arose here; we just sank deeper into the mud. All the money went to Hilltop.”) to more current times (“We’re no more than fodder for the Channel 2 News; Drive-bys, crack dealers, rapes and scandals. Richmond is the town everyone loves to hate—from the safety of their living room couch, mind you.”)
“Notoriety has attached itself to the city over the decades,” Abel said. “I found that [Richmond’s reputation] was largely undeserved. It’s hard for me to put this in words. There are a lot of white people in the Bay Area who would never think for five seconds of moving there even though there are some wonderful neighborhoods.”
The ten-minute long song takes on quite a bit of Richmond history, something that is reflected in changes of mood throughout. For example, the music comes to a full stop about two minutes into the song just after Lonnie finishes describing the economic downturn. After a pause, high strings lead the listener into the story of the 1960s rioting and the development of the Hilltop. The music is slow and sad, but has an ominous tone.
“It certainly starts kind of starkly … and then as it takes you through various metamorphoses of historical events,” Abel said. “I’m just using the instruments to try and depict the progress of time.”
Abel also uses instruments to indicate hope in Richmond’s future at the end of the song. “Even though I tried to express in music, as well as in words, the bleakness of … the Iron Triangle experience, I tried to end the piece with ambiguous hopefulness,” he said. “It ends in this gentle way where Lonnie takes his leave of the person he’s been talking to in the nice polite way like he would. And the music ends floating away letting you know that it’s not a hopeless situation and things can change.”v
In his last few lines, Lonnie explains that he and his wife, Doris, do not plan to leave Richmond. Although their children fled years before for Vallejo or Sacramento, the most important aspects of Lonnie and Doris’ lives remain in Richmond. “Still, there is beauty here—parks and harbor and history,” Lonnie sings. “And plenty to be proud of—ballplayers, musicians, doctors and workers.”
For Abel, his choice of musical style was the best way to encompass his feelings about Richmond. “[The music] has a whole bunch of characteristics that are specific to classical music,” he said. “It has gravitas, it’s full of time changes and stops and starts. You don’t hear that in pop music at all and jazz does not do that sort of thing either … Classical is really the only idiom that does that.”
Abel’s life also played a part in the formation of his songs. The son of well-known journalist Elie Abel, Mark Abel left college after two years in the late ‘60s to play rock music. “I went on a kind of an odyssey trying to develop my voice in a rock music context,” he said. But, after a handful of albums and years of playing music, Abel returned to California and became a journalist himself. He worked for the San Francisco Chronicle for over 17 years, including nine years as the head of the Chronicle’s foreign news service.
But eventually, Abel, who now lives in Carlsbad, returned to music as a composer and song writer. He taught himself orchestration and more about the type of music he hoped to achieve. His first classical album, Songs of Life, Love and Death, came out in 2006 and was based on poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke and Pablo Neruda. His 2008 album, Journey Long, Journey Far, featured Abel’s own lyrics.
The Dream Gallery is Abel’s third album, and one he’s been working on a long time. Abel wrote “Helen,” the song about Los Angeles, first and wasn’t sure if it should be an isolated piece or part of something bigger. Finally, he decided to create a gallery of characters based on his memories and experiences of different people and places in California.
As for the music itself, Abel said it represents a synthesis of the music of his life. “It’s authentic to me,” he said. “And people will like it and understand it or they won’t.”
To learn more about Mark Abel and The Dream Gallery, visit markabelmusic.com. The album is available digitally on iTunes, Amazon, Delos, ArkivMusic.com or ClassicsOnline. CDs of the album will be released on March 27.
The music … involves some very accessible, serious symphonic song crafting, a contemporary opera without costumes and props. … The stories can be quite moving at times, with their well-conceived musical settings.
Abel has crafted an … excellently written work that is a joy to hear. The soloists and orchestra do a terrific job with the score, and no doubt it could be considered a triumph.
In turn, Abel focuses on Berkeley (“If only we could build a wall to keep out those who would pollute our purity”), with mezzo Janelle DeStefano nicely dramatizing the snob-liberal; San Diego (“We’re in La Costa for now, but soon we’ll be moving up to Rancho Santa Fe”) gets a saccharine treatment from the sweet-sounding Delaney Gibson as the music drives to a pseudo rock beat;
Richmond brings the wonderfully dramatic bass of Carver Cossey to Abel’s best treatment, but also the most devastating assessment (“Broken glass, broken lives”); and onward to Soledad, an immigrant haven near Salinas, where alto Martha Jane Weaver sings movingly (“We had to fight to belong here”); and finally, Arcata, the northernmost spot geographically, with tenor Tom Zohar presenting a stage-y style in the final track, asking, seemingly, what Abel had in mind all along: (“What now?”).
Certainly there will be no Chamber of Commerce trophies given out (for “Gallery”). (But) musically, Abel is more than a little competent.
Each song in "The Dream Gallery" features a different vocalist as a character based on a city — ranging from metropolises like San Diego and Los Angeles to lesser-known towns such as Taft, Arcata and Soledad.
Theatrical, operatic and recording artists from across the state took on powerful personas for tracks on "The Dream Gallery," including two vocalists rooted in the La Jolla community — Janelle DeStefano and Martha Jane Weaver.
Weaver, a soloist and section leader at St. James-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church and part-time music instructor at The Bishop’s School, transformed her robust style from a mezzo soprano into a contralto for her part in "Luz," which depicts a migrant worker’s wife and her hardships living in Northern California’s Soledad area.
On the transformation, Weaver said, "The whole range of the piece, it was very, very low, and I think I’m really, really proud of how well it turned out for me vocally. It was a real challenge to just sort of come out of that really deep chest voice and get the effects that Mark wanted."
DeStefano sings a more biting and satirical piece for the montage. Her mezzo soprano voice depicts the character "Naomi" in a piercing track about Berkeley that exposes a sense of elitism and the double standard that exists in a demographic of upper middle class residents who boast tolerance but cease to practice it. Consider the lyrics: "My heart bleeds, truly. / Life’s not fair, but it’s not my fault. / I wish the best for all, isn’t that enough?"
DeStefano, who attended college at UC Santa Cruz, revisited Berkeley for her role as "Naomi"
When I first saw the lyrics I thought, ‘Oh, this a little harsh on them,’ ” DeStefano said. "I have a lot of friends in that area, but I could appreciate that sort of irony."
Each track in "The Dream Gallery" supports Abel’s view that the album is just as much a psychological work of art as it is a musical entity.
"Life is complex and appearances can be deceiving," he said, "and you really have to check out people and places on a micro-level to understand them."
In addition to Weaver and DeStefano, "The Dream Gallery" also features vocalists Carver Cossey, Delaney Gibson, Mary Jaeb, David Marshman and Tom Zohar.
"I try to use these two idioms working together from the ground up," Abel said in a recent interview. "I'm trying to use structural and timbral ideas from classical, but if there's something from the rock world, I'm not opposed to using it.
"My music is borrowing from a bunch of different places. ... It's a hybrid, in my opinion, of classical and rock above all. There's a little bit of jazz in there, but jazz is improvisational and that doesn't work with static composition."
Composing classical music is not only complicated and time-consuming, but finding an orchestra to perform it is not cheap, either ---- which is why most of the composers we remember today had royal or ecclesiastical sponsors.
Established, well-known composers today often rely on big-city symphonies or opera companies commissioning new works (often in collectives to share the cost), providing both an income to pay the bills and access to an orchestra to bring the music to life during the composing process.
Composers like Abel, who don't have strong name recognition or the kind of deep connections that lead to commissions, have traditionally been shut out of the world of classical music.
But Abel said technology has changed the rules ---- particularly MIDI sampling, which allows a single computerized musical keyboard to digitally reproduce the sound of all the instruments in an orchestra
"When MIDI technology came along, I realized that this was my first opportunity to really explore complex compositions."
"I first got into MIDI in 1987, and of course I had no idea what I was doing. In those days, samplers were punishingly expensive. My first attempts at extended compositions were done on cheap little synthesizers ---- which was very useful in getting me into the MIDI compositional world, but the sounds were not attractive to me."
""For four years or so, it helped me get going ---- then I was able to start acquiring samplers, and now my spare bedroom is full of samplers going back to the '90s.""
Using MIDI samplers, Abel has recorded his music without incurring the expense of hiring a real symphony. He admits he'd rather have a real orchestra perform his music, but the recordings have allowed him to get his name out there.
And that last part is what he thinks is key to finding a larger audience for his music. Abel said he thinks classical music is in a state of flux right now, after the great burst of symphonic music following World War II.
"Since the mid-'70s, everybody's just kind of fumbling around ... there's no agreement about who's leading the pack."
Not that classical music is alone in being in transition ---- jazz, tango, flamenco are all coming out of times of incredible creative energy. Asked about jazz saxophonist Dave Liebman's observation that younger people are more likely to synthesize new forms than worry about revitalizing existing ones, Abel said he thought Liebman was "completely spot-on."
"I think it's natural that all the artistic elements people perceive around the world are going to be in play now, and they're going to be mixed and matched as people see fit."
"World art should be open to everybody, and now it's happening for the first time."
"Really creative people don't want to accept the pabulum of what a lot of the music industry represents. The Internet has a lot to do with it."
"The system for distributing music is still going through all kinds of shake-outs, and God only knows if and when that will ever reconstitute itself."
As Abel sees it, though, this state of confusion is nothing more than a moment of opportunity for composers such as himself, who lack name recognition but not passion or ideas.
"Art has to move forward somehow, even during periods when people don't know in which direction it is going."
The concept album explores the complex psyches and social milieus of Californians, with each song highlighting a different personality and region. Gibson, with high-powered vocals cultivated from her musical theatre past, is a perfect fit to step into the skin of a character, in this case that of Carol, a San Diego soccer mom imprisoned in the myopic frivolity of her own lifestyle.
The seven portraits Mark Abel paints in "The Dream Gallery" tell seven representative versions of the California dream, a dream mistreated by harsh realities. A Californian for 30 years, Abel is blunt and yet compassionate, filling his portraits with details that ring true. The composer writes in the vein of Jacques Brel and Léo Ferré. He found seven singers, familiar figures on the Southern California opera and symphonic scene, to lend their voices to his gallery of the disenchanted. The music, lyrical and gripping, serves well-crafted texts.
"I describe my music as post-modern art song. Through poetic texts, I try for a larger commentary about society," explained Abel, a former journalist who is releasing his third CD with "The Dream Gallery."
Continue to more press for Mark Abel's previous CDs.