Praise for "Spectrum"
Gramophone
By Donald Rosenberg
Mark Abel continues to demonstrate his versatility in the works on the newest Delos release of his music, Spectrum, a generous two-disc helping of song cycles, chamber pieces and excerpts from an opera still roaming around the California-based composer’s fertile brain. As the previous recordings revealed, Abel writes in a poetic tonal style, at times reminiscent of Samuel Barber, peppered by flavourful harmonies and piquant turns of phrase.
Abel’s affinity for setting words is in appealing bloom in songs of diverse atmosphere and feeling. In Trois femmes du cinéma he salutes revered artists who may not be on every movie maven’s radar. Salient aspects in the lives of the French actress and novelist Anne Wiazemsky, Mexican actress Pina Pellicer and Ukrainian Soviet director Larisa Shepitko are touched upon in Abel’s poignant and forceful narratives, set to his own texts, and beautifully limned in the performances by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and pianist Carol Rosenberger.
The two scenes from the evolving opera The Book of Esther, set to texts by Kate Gale, can’t suggest how the drama ultimately will unfold with orchestra, but the characters and their challenges are drawn with skilful and spare urgency. The first scene, ‘"The Maiden Esther," details the woman’s anxiety as she contemplates royal life. "Two Queens" finds her receiving advice from her predecessor, Vashti, who encourages Esther to be bold. On this recording, the scenes are scored for violin, clarinet and piano, which bring the simmering emotions into intimate focus. Soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich likely would be as potent in these roles on stage as they are in the recording studio. Scharich also does eloquent work, with pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, in Abel’s 1966, three songs set to Abel’s own texts about his fresh experiences as an 18-year-old.
Animated and pensive writing also pervade three instrumental works: Reconciliation Day for viola and piano, Out the Other Side for violin, cello and piano, and The Long March for the novel combination of flute, horn and piano. They are all performed with elegant vibrancy.
Opera News
By Arlo McKinnon
Following an early career as a rock musician, record producer and journalist, Mark Abel has become a prolific composer in the realm of classical music. While most of his works are vocal, he has written in various instrumental genres and in opera. His music has been extensively released on the Delos label, and this latest release features three vocal works and three instrumental ones.
Abel has developed a very personal style, based equally on rock and classical music. The music is tonal yet not closely tied to standard harmonic practices. His basic technique is episodic and seems to be based upon finding ideas through improvisation, consisting of the construction of a series of small musical segments, one following the previous one. Although he creates linkages from one segment to another, the process is rather subjective. You don’t find recapitulations or other indicators of a larger encompassing structure, but this works well for him and leads to much varied and colorful musical imagery.
The most intriguing piece on the program consists of two scenes from The Book of Esther, an opera in development with texts by Kate Gale. The first is “The Maiden Esther,” an aria for Esther, in which she describes her nervousness over meeting King Ahasuerus, who’s considering her as a potential new wife. The other, “Two Queens,” is a duet depicting a hypothetical discussion between Esther and Vashti, Ahasuerus’s deposed first wife. Hila Plitmann inspired the work, and she portrays Esther. I associate Plitmann with breathtaking vocal acrobatics in the altisissimo coloratura register; it’s nice to hear in this instance that she has a sweet, endearing tone in the more standard soprano range. She conveys Esther with great empathy, as she describes the challenges and pressures she faces from the king. Mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich gives a dramatically rich portrayal of Vashti, with a combination of envy, bitterness and understanding. The singers are very ably accompanied by violinist Adam Millstein, clarinetist Max Opferkuch and Dominic Cheli on the piano. I hope the opera will be completed and heard.
The disc opens with Trois Femmes du Cinéma, a suite of homages to French actress/director/writer Anne Wiazemsky, Mexican actress Pina Pellicer and Ukrainian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko. As he frequently does, Abel wrote the lyrics as well as the music. All three women had fascinating careers, tinged with accomplishment and sorrow. The suite is beautifully performed by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and pianist Carol Rosenberger. From the triumphs of Wiazemsky through the tragedy of Pellicer’s all-too-brief life and the resolute determination of Shepitko as she succeeded in spite of Soviet censorship and sexism, the three women are dramatically and sympathetically portrayed.
The modular aspect of Abel’s writing style is most transparent in the three instrumental works on the program--Reconciliation Day for viola (David Samuel) and piano (Cheli); Out the Other Side for violin, cello and piano (Trio Barclay); and The Long March for flute (Christy Kim), horn (Jeff Garza) and piano (Cheli). All three make good use of the ensembles, but also seem to be of arbitrary construction and left me ambiguous.
The album closes with 1966, a set of three songs in which Abel recalls his eighteenth year, when he drove across the country from New York to San Francisco. His texts, two of which were penned that year, depict his early impressions of his new home, his first love affair and an intermediary hike in the mountains of Wyoming. The music is vividly dramatic and poignant, and it’s beautifully performed by Scharich and her longtime collaborator, pianist Jeffrey LaDeur.
Mark Abel’s music might not be not for all tastes, but it will find many sympathetic, devoted listeners.
Textura. org
By Ron Schepper
While appreciation for Mark Abel's music is undeniably enhanced by familiarity with releases such as The Cave of Wondrous Voice (2020), Time and Distance (2018), and Home is a Harbor (2016), it's not required when the double-CD set Spectrum, the sixth album on Delos by the American composer, offers a compact, stand-alone account of his artistry. Comprised of three vocal works and three chamber pieces, the recording is distinguished by Abel's writing but also the performers: sopranos Hila Plitmann, Isabel Bayrakdarian, and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich; pianists Carol Rosenberger, Dominic Cheli, Sean Kennard, and Jeffrey LaDeur; violinists Dennis Kim, Adam Millstein, violist David Samuel, and cellist Jonah Kim; and hornist Jeff Garza, flutist Christy Kim, and clarinetist Max Opferkuch. All involved do much to maximize the allure of Abel's already appealing music.
Though his discography might suggest his professional career had a classical focus from the start, the path that brought Abel to his present roles as classical composer and Delos co-director was circuitous. Like many a teen, he early gravitated to rock and jazz, interests that led, first, to a stint as a NYC-based guitarist, bassist, songwriter, and record producer in the ‘70s and ‘80s and, second, as a journalist. Over time, his childhood affection for classical music re-emerged and became a full-time vocation, bringing him to where he is today.
As these latest works reveal, Abel's beholden to no school in the writing department, and neither are there discernible influences, even if his music sits comfortably within the classical tradition as part of an ongoing continuum. He is, as it were, his own man, a composer who brings his sensibility and highly developed command of craft to a particular idea and illuminates it in strikingly imaginative manner.
Indicative of the personal kernel from which his work grows is Trois Femmes du Cinema, its creation sparked by his love for art films of the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s and its three parts celebrations of Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer, and Larisa Shepitko. In the booklet included with the release, Abel provides mini-bios for each one, a canny move when their names will be unknown to most of today's moviegoers. Smart also was his decision to introduce Spectrum with a work that augments the illustrious vocal artistry of Bayrakdarian with the sensitive accompaniment of Rosenberger. Abel's lyrical writing and the duo's performance accentuate the pathos of lives that ascended to glorious peaks but also endured personal and professional disappointment. Wiazemsky, for example, appeared in films by Bresson, Pasolini, and Godard, and even married the latter, despite a pronounced age difference; when that union ended, however, her career likewise deflated, though she eventually re-established herself in France as a novelist, film director, and screenplay author before dying of cancer in 2017. While Pellicer enjoyed success as an actress in Brando's One-Eyed Jacks and also caught the eye of Alfred Hitchcock, she suffered from depression and ultimately took her life in 1964. Now regarded as an unjustly overlooked figure, Shepitko wasn't an actress but rather a Soviet-era director tragically killed in a 1979 car crash. In true art song fashion, Abel's music replicates the emotional trajectory of the words in each setting, in this case the texts penned by the composer himself.
The release's first disc closes with two ten-minute instrumental works, Reconciliation Day, an expressive and suitably enigmatic viola-and-piano duet essayed magnificently by Samuel and Cheli, and Out the Other Side, a wide-ranging showcase written for and dynamically performed by Trio Barclay members Kim, Kim, and Kennard. Speaking of showcases, the vocal gifts of Plitmann and Scharich are displayed in the second disc's opening work, Two Scenes from “The Book of Esther,” their singing beautifully supported by Cheli, Millstein, and Opferkuch and the text about the biblical heroine written by LA poet Kate Gale. Whereas the first scene, “The Maiden Esther,” features Plitmann alone, “Two Queens” pairs the soprano as Esther with Scharich in the role of Vashti, the queen who's been cast from her throne by the Persian king Ahasuerus. The combination of singer and trio amplifies the intimacy of Esther's soliloquy in the nine-minute first scene and the drama of the spoken-sung encounter between the two women in the fourteen-minute second. Despite the modest instrumental forces in play, the music exudes a compelling neo-orchestral character that suggests how effective it would be performed by a large ensemble.
After The Long March, a thirteen-minute trio excursion unusual for blending flute (Kim), horn (Garza), and piano (Cheli), comes the final vocal work, 1966, Abel again credited with text for the three-part song cycle. Written for and performed by Scharich and LaDeur, the piece reflects on the time the composer turned eighteen and the life-changing events that happened during that period—a romance, a hike, and San Francisco visit. Wistful, nostalgic, and, yes, lyrical, the songs are rendered gracefully by the pair, the outpouring of “First Love” particularly affecting. As stated, one's appreciation for Abel's work is enhanced by familiarity with all of his Delos releases, but Spectrum functions as a fine exemplar of the whole, especially when it features vocal and instrumental works. Best of all, his oft-lyrical, melody-rich material exemplifies exceptional craft and emotional resonance, and at ninety-two minutes, the package manages to be both comprehensive and tidy in its single-volume presentation.
The Journal of Singing
By Gregory Berg
It is good to have another recording of music by Mark Abel, a composer who has a lot to say and has some very intriguing ways of saying it. The collection at hand features a mix of vocal and instrumental works, and everything here is deeply engaging and unfailingly fresh. The composer tells us in his liner notes that this recording represents “both an expansion of horizons and a summing up of the ground traveled during my decade with the Delos label.” Indeed, there is a whiff of the familiar here, but it is balanced by an invigorating sense of new vistas being probed.
This may also be the most deeply personal recording that Abel has yet presented to the public, with several of the works contained herein springing quite directly from the composer’s life experience. The single clearest example of this is 1966, a work that Abel was inspired to compose in the midst of the making of this recording. The title refers to the summer when the country was undergoing exciting yet wrenching changes that ran in parallel to his own personal tumult as he turned eighteen years old. The texts of the first two songs are largely based on poetry that Abel wrote at the time, with some recent tweaks. This is gorgeous, impassioned music, and one can tell that it was very carefully crafted for mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich. Her singing is expressively generous and consistently beautiful; one might only wish that the words were a bit easier to understand. Jeffrey LaDeur partners her with unfailing sensitivity.
Scharich is also heard in Two Scenes from “The Book of Esther.” Abel’s liner notes describe this as “an opera in development,” and these two excerpts sound very promising. The accompaniment (piano, violin and clarinet) creates an intensely exotic atmosphere against which the voices stand out with striking clarity. The first song conveys the anxiety of Esther as she contemplates whether or not she will be regarded with favor by the Persian King Ahasuerus. Soprano Hila Plitmann sings with gleaming freshness and emotional openness. The second song is an invented confrontation between Esther and the ousted Queen Vashti that culminates in clashing sorrows. This is among the most demanding music on this disk, but Plitmann and Scharich are utterly fearless in the face of its challenges. It is the searing intensity of this scene that leads one to hope that Abel will someday complete what he and poet Kate Gale have begun.
The recording opens with perhaps the most colorful work of all, Trois Femmes du Cinema, which is inspired by Abel’s fascination with art house cinema. He has written beautiful texts in honor of three alluring women – Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko – whose work he has long admired. The texts do a remarkable job of conveying the wonder of the cinema and the unique mystique of those who inhabit this world. The poem titled “Anne” begins with these provocative words:
She walked through a long
hall of mirrors,
opened wide to all frontiers
of the possible.
Opened wide to everything
sacred and profane.
Life’s hexagrams unfolding
shifting, sliding
reassembling into new alchemies.
These are flamboyant, rhapsodic songs into which Abel pours a seemingly endless stream of musical ideas. Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, whose voice and artistry has led her to most of the leading opera companies of the world, is exactly the kind of alluring artist that these songs both require and deserve. At the piano is Carol Rosenberger, who has been the lead pianist on the Delos label (and one of its leading artistic forces) since its founding in 1973. Her brilliant playing here represents a stirring and fitting conclusion to her distinguished career.
Abel has considerable gifts for writing vocal music, but it is safe to say that some of the most compelling moments on this disk are actually found in the instrumental pieces. The Long March is especially captivating because of its rare and arresting combination of flute, horn and piano. One would not think these timbres would blend well, but they absolutely do. Reconciliation Day is a deeply enigmatic work for viola and piano that offers a kaleidoscope of contrasting emotions and moods that Abel expertly weaves together. Out the Other Side, like 1966, was composed while this recording was being made and was inspired by the pleasure of collaborating with so many fine musicians. Abel writes of how this piece “packs an array of widely varied punches,” and that says it very well.
Abel’s liner notes are thorough and earnestly written. Full texts of all the songs are included, along with biographies of all the participating musicians as well as the three stars who are celebrated in Trois Femmes du Cinema. The sound quality is as clear and crisp as we have come to expect from Delos.
Copyright © 2023
National Association of Teachers of Singing
The Journal of Singing
Kathleen Roland-Silverstein on Trois Femmes du Cinema
Mark Abel, whose works frequently have been reviewed in this column, is a gifted and fascinating composer. Abel, whose peripatetic interests have led him to a wide range of literary sources, chose to write his own texts for these songs. The texts are effective and insightful, drawing the listener into the intriguing life stories of three women, icons of film in the last century, and all largely unknown. Each song in the cycle is prefaced by a biography of the artist.
Anne Wiazemsky (1947-2017) was an actress, muse and, following her long retreat from public life, a novelist, director and screenplay writer. Anne’s work and life were linked to two formidable figures in the arts, Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022), to whom she was married from 1967 to 1979, and Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). Abel’s first song, “Anne,” aptly illustrates Wiazemsky’s life, led first through connection to the film industry, then through isolation and her ultimate emergence as an important voice for women artists in the second half of the century.
The second song celebrates Pina Pellicer (1934-1964), a Mexican actress admired by Marlon Brando and Alfred Hitchcock, and demonstrates Abel’s profound empathy for the characters he delineates. In the poignant ending of the second song, he quotes from a letter written by Pina before she took her own life.
I believe in human beings, I believe
above all in those who love me
and I am sorry to disappoint them,
but I can’t take it any more.
The final song, “Larisa,” concerns the story of Larisa Shepitko, a Soviet-era director tragically killed in an automobile accident. Her film The Ascent is described by Abel as “very possibly the greatest film ever made about World War II.”
Abel’s signature style, described earlier by this writer as a “color palette of rock, classical and jazz influences,” continues to evolve. His writing here for the piano creates a strong independent voice just translucent enough to join effectively with the almost acrobatic vocal lines. These are wide ranging in all three songs, dipping into the lowest pitches of the female voice and then soaring an octave or more. The shifting tonality is challenging, but not unduly so; likewise the metric fluctuations throughout. These serve the musical and dramatic intent well, and in the hands of an excellent singer and pianist can be absolutely arresting pictures of these women. The composer follows the stresses and nuances of his text unerringly, and the sometimes unsettling melodic leaps only serve to highlight the emotive colors of the texts.
In Trois Femmes du Cinema, Mark Abel has created three commanding and disquieting portraits, bringing to life the singular personalities of these extraordinary women, whose imprint on contemporary life in film was one of strength in the face of despair. All three songs can be heard sung by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian on the recently release Delos recording Mark Abel: Spectrum. Abel’s gorgeous and complex songs are a welcome addition to a body of repertoire that serves to advance women’s voices.
Copyright © 2023
National Association of Teachers of Singing
The Whole Note
By Raul da Gama
Even before you begin to listen to Mark Abel’s Spectrum – a generously packaged double disc of vocal works – you know you’re in for a rare treat. Not only do we meet Isabel Bayrakdarian, a haunting soprano singing emotionally in praise of three women artists we might never have known if Abel had not set their lives to song, but we find ourselves in the thrall of the Jewish heroine Esther, whose strength and cunning prevented the extermination of a fifth-century Jewish community by Haman, the powerful vizier of the Persian King Xerxes.
As if modern lieder on disc one and the operetta Two Scenes from The Book of Esther aren’t enough, Abel also puts his considerable compositional prowess to work on instrumental music performed with immense integrity and authority by Trio Barclay, and other strings, horn and woodwinds, musicians of the highest order, on each of the two discs.
Spectrum is spotlighted by Bayrakdarian and pianist Carol Rosenberger who celebrate the lives of Anne Wiazemsky (1947-2017), Pina Pellicer (1934-1964) and Larisa Shepitko (1938-1979), three icons of modern film on Trois Femmes du Cinema. Abel’s work tells of their courage in holding their own against the power of patriarchal misogyny in the film industry. Meanwhile, soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich glorify the story of Queen Esther. Scharich returns to partner pianist Jeffrey LaDeur in the soul-stirring song cycle 1966 to close out the absolutely unimpeachable Spectrum of music by Abel.
Cinemusical
By Steve Kennedy
Spectrum is a collection of chamber music from composer Mark Abel. It is the sixth release of his work on the Delos label and here focuses on a balance of song cycles and smaller instrumental works. Artists featured here are also intimately connected to the label in some way or another, which makes the collaborations have an additional personal layer. The lyricism of Abel’s music creates instantly engaging music which is enhanced by his dramatic, modern harmonic language.
Opening the first disc is Trois Femmes du Cinema, whose texts Abel wrote to reflect on three international film figures: Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko. “Anne”, the first song, has an almost noir-ish quality in its opening moments. The music itself has a richer, semi-romantic quality with perhaps a touch of the musical stage. It is a quite stunning little work that paves the way for some of the really lovely reflective moments that appear in “Pina.” This piece too has an interesting almost stream-of-consciousness feel that moves through a reflective sketch of her life. Chromaticism and a bit more dissonance come to the fore front in “Larisa.” Each song creates an interesting dramatic compositional approach coupled with interesting shifts into closer intervallic writing that may open up to more traditional arrival points. The cycle is reminiscent of some of the more advanced Sondheim musicals, of which these pieces seem to inhabit as distant cousins.
With texts by Kate Gale, “Two Scenes from the Book of Esther” provides a look at the iconic Biblical heroine. The music here is written for a chamber ensemble and is a sort of preliminary pairing of scenes for an opera-in-development. The opening scene moves us from a young Esther into a confrontation between her and the ousted queen Vashti. The accompaniment patterns sometimes have a little folkish rhythmic feel to them from time to time which adds some forward motion. There are also some quite gorgeous vocal lines as Esther dreams a bit in the first song. It is an interesting diptych of music with a bit more modern dramatic style. Disc two closes with a setting of three songs, 1966, which serve a semi-autobiographical exploration of Abel’s life. The texts are also derived from his own early poetry and connect with his hopes and early life experiences in often beautiful moments.
The first chamber piece is a work for viola and piano. Reconciliation Day has aspects that can be heard in the opening cycle of disc one with its moodier qualities contrasted with burst of sound and forward motion. There is a jazzy, rhythmic feel that has a dance-like quality to help move things along with the calmer sections having a semi-impressionist quality. Out the Other Side is for violin, cello, and piano. A small motivic gesture becomes the launching point for this piece that involves some interesting dialogue between the three lines. The approach is somewhat episodic in nature in its pushing and pulling of musical ideas that come and go in brief spurts of sound. It is also interesting to hear Abel move between the more intense, dissonant segments, into a more traditional, extended harmonic mode. Rhythms also have a jazz edge, even a folkish one at times all leading to a somewhat upbeat, though abrupt ending. Disc two features the third chamber piece, The Long March for flute, horn, and piano. Abel takes us on a musical journey that allows him to explore the unique timbre of these two instruments against the, often exhilarating, piano interactions, including an extended cadenza-like section. The lyrical style here provides some quite stunning music that is enhanced by the performances.
After a couple pages of Abel’s reflections on the pieces here, the accompanying booklet focuses on information about the women of the opening song cycle along with the respective texts. Texts for the other cycles are also included (though the diction of all the performers is excellent on its own, this helps one consider the way the music is set). The bulk of the booklet, though, goes to information about the performers on the recording, which is quite extensive for a project like this. The sound throughout has a nice immediacy, with fine balance and ambience that warms the sound just a bit. The performers are all quite engaging and prove to be excellent advocates for Abel’s music. This is a fine collection of contemporary chamber music with a little bit of something for everyone.
CultureSpot LA
By Henry Schlinger
The Delos label has released two new CDs of contemporary music, broadly defined. The music spans 100 years and dates from the 1920s to 2022. Shapeshifter features the music of the German-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, who lived from 1894 to 1942. Spectrum features a collection of new works by contemporary American (and Californian) composer Mark Abel. Both Shapeshifter and Spectrum illustrate Delos’ commitment to recording new music even if the music was composed in the 20th century.
Spectrum is Mark Abel’s sixth album for Delos. It features a wide spectrum of Abel’s recent works, including his trademark vocal stylings — two song cycles with texts by the composer and an opera excerpt — and three chamber pieces, one for viola and piano, one for violin, cello and piano, and one for horn, flute and piano.
Abel has been branching out more recently with chamber works for a variety of instruments. For example, Reconciliation Day, for viola and piano (I’m sure viola players will be happy!), moves from contemplative to cheerful but is always evocative. It is played with sensitivity and feeling by pianist Dominic Cheli (who is also the pianist on Shapeshifter) and violist David Samuel.
The title for another piece, The Long March, with its interesting grouping of horn, flute and piano, refers simply to Abel’s journey writing the piece and the performers’ journey in playing it. This time, pianist Cheli is joined by Jeff Garza on horn and Christy Kim on flute. Abel weaves together melodic lines for the three instruments, indeed taking the listener on a satisfying musical journey. Together these musicians admirably render Abel’s adroit writing for these instruments.
Though Abel’s music is as contemporary as it gets (composed within the past couple of years), it is still very accessible with melodic and harmonic lines that pack an emotional punch. On Spectrum, as on his other CDs, Abel brings his unique history of rock, jazz and literary influences to his classical compositions, and the result is a refreshingly distinctive approach to contemporary music.
The music on these two CDs is complementary. Both include writing for small ensembles, and both combine elements of classical and jazz influences. For those listeners interested in hearing music they have never heard before (Schulhoff) or new music (Abel) that is interesting and engaging, we cannot recommend these two CDs enough.
Fanfare
By Henry Fogel
Mark Abel (b. 1948) is an American composer whose background is remarkably varied. He was a journalist who served as foreign editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a New York rock musician with his own bands in the 1970s and 1980s, and then a classical composer. His music is tonal, although at times it stretches tonal boundaries, and he has a genuine melodic gift that serves him well.
The most contemporary-sounding work here is the pair of scenes from The Book of Esther, described by Abel as “a slice of an opera in development.” The music is scored for soprano (Esther) and mezzo-soprano (Vashti, the queen banished by Persian king Ahasuerus), clarinet, violin, and piano. ... The two scenes deal with the banishment of Vashti and the dilemma facing Esther as to whether she should approach the king to convince him to repeal Haman’s order to kill the Jews. I have to say that I admired the score more than I loved it. Soprano Hila Plitmann, a specialist in Abel’s music, throws herself into the part of Esther, and the other performers are fully engaged, but I found the score a bit relentless in its harshness.
I thought everything else on these two discs was considerably more attractive. Trois Femmes du Cinema is a charming tribute to the French actress Anne Wiazemsky, the Mexican actress Pina Pellicer, and the Ukrainian film director and actress Larisa Shepitko. Abel writes of his great love for the films of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and his celebration of all three ladies is beautifully sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian.
Reconciliation Day is accurately described by Abel as “moody.” ... It is scored for viola and piano, and the dark-hued tone of the viola is perfect for the unsettled nature of the music. I found this score particularly lovely.
Out the Other Side was composed for Trio Barclay, in residence at the Barclay Theater at the University of California-Irvine and the performers here. This is the most extroverted music on the program, filled with rhythmic vitality and energy. It shares those qualities with The Long March, composed for a trio of flute, horn, and piano. Another quality that can be heard in much of Abel’s music is humor, and it is puckishly present in The Long March.
1966 was composed for mezzo Kindra Scharich and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur. This is music of nostalgia and recollection. Abel wrote it to evoke the year he turned 18. The music is evocative, with a wistful beauty underlying much of it. The performance is all a composer could ask for.
Abel’s notes are very helpful, and the booklet provides complete texts, for which Delos deserves praise. The recorded sound is well balanced and natural. Although the scenes from The Book of Esther didn’t connect with me, I found a great deal to enjoy in the remainder of the program. Warmly recommended.
Classical-Modern Music Review
By Grego Applegate Edwards
In the ongoing cycles of seasons, events, living and keeping on in my position I can be rather amazed at the sheer number of new composers, less-known composers and new music possibilities one can appreciate in any given season. A very good example of what I have been delving into? That is chamber music and song by one Mark Abel, in an album entitled Spectrum (Delos DE 3592 2CDs). Type his name in the search box and you will see he has been a good example of a lyrical bent for some time.
Listening to this set numerous times reveals a crafter of vibrant melodic-harmonic landscapes of a ravishing sort, perhaps in the footsteps but not the actual shoes of a Samuel Barber (the Knoxville and such). There are some extraordinarily well-wrought song cycles and settings here, all showing a sure sense of the vocal potentials; dramatic and lyric, with heightened musical light like a contemporary sort of Impressionist palette -- not for exclusively for vocalist and pianist but with added instruments at times, such as the very evocative clarinet in "Two Scenes from The Book of Esther."
Happily there are also some strong instrumental chamber works that show a marked lyrical gift, from the melodically mesmerizing "Reconciliation Day" for viola and piano, "Out the Other Side" for piano trio, and "The Long March" for horn, flute and piano. The performances are all you might hope for in a world premiere situation, very well done.
You will probably not think, "What an advanced progressive music is this!" so much as you will appreciate the sheer beauty of it all. You listen, you grow fond of it; I hope you will like it, as I do.
Take Effect Reviews
By Tom Haugen
The esteemed composer Mark Abel brings us two discs of songs and chamber works that spotlight the inimitable talents of vocalists Hila Plitmann, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Kindra Scharich, and also features pianist Dominic Cheli, Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim, Alexander String Quartet violist David Samuel, plus cellist Jonah Kim, horn player Jeff Garza, flutist Christy Kim and pianists Sean Kennard and Jeffrey LaDeur.
“Trois Femmes Du Cinema” opens the listen, with Bayrakdarian’s gorgeous, soaring soprano surrounded by the firm, agile keys of Carol Rosenberger. Abel provides texts about the cult figures Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko.
“Two Scenes From ‘The Book Of Esther’” follows, and recruits stirring strings and Plitmann’s soprano and Scharich’s mezzo-soprano for a sometimes busy setting that’s both tense and pretty amid the precise winds.
Deeper into the album, the cautious strings and warm keys of “Reconciliation Day” get quite animated, while “Out The Other Side” flows with a very introspective appeal, where the instrumentation is often emotive, sometimes lively and even a bit darker on occasion.
The final piece, “1966”, might be the best, and emits so much profound elegance from both the expressive singing and dynamic musicianship that radiates timelessness in its heartfelt execution.
With this stunning body of work, Abel further solidifies himself as a prominent figure in the area of contemporary music. A well-crafted chamber listen.
By Donald Rosenberg
Mark Abel continues to demonstrate his versatility in the works on the newest Delos release of his music, Spectrum, a generous two-disc helping of song cycles, chamber pieces and excerpts from an opera still roaming around the California-based composer’s fertile brain. As the previous recordings revealed, Abel writes in a poetic tonal style, at times reminiscent of Samuel Barber, peppered by flavourful harmonies and piquant turns of phrase.
Abel’s affinity for setting words is in appealing bloom in songs of diverse atmosphere and feeling. In Trois femmes du cinéma he salutes revered artists who may not be on every movie maven’s radar. Salient aspects in the lives of the French actress and novelist Anne Wiazemsky, Mexican actress Pina Pellicer and Ukrainian Soviet director Larisa Shepitko are touched upon in Abel’s poignant and forceful narratives, set to his own texts, and beautifully limned in the performances by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and pianist Carol Rosenberger.
The two scenes from the evolving opera The Book of Esther, set to texts by Kate Gale, can’t suggest how the drama ultimately will unfold with orchestra, but the characters and their challenges are drawn with skilful and spare urgency. The first scene, ‘"The Maiden Esther," details the woman’s anxiety as she contemplates royal life. "Two Queens" finds her receiving advice from her predecessor, Vashti, who encourages Esther to be bold. On this recording, the scenes are scored for violin, clarinet and piano, which bring the simmering emotions into intimate focus. Soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich likely would be as potent in these roles on stage as they are in the recording studio. Scharich also does eloquent work, with pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, in Abel’s 1966, three songs set to Abel’s own texts about his fresh experiences as an 18-year-old.
Animated and pensive writing also pervade three instrumental works: Reconciliation Day for viola and piano, Out the Other Side for violin, cello and piano, and The Long March for the novel combination of flute, horn and piano. They are all performed with elegant vibrancy.
Opera News
By Arlo McKinnon
Following an early career as a rock musician, record producer and journalist, Mark Abel has become a prolific composer in the realm of classical music. While most of his works are vocal, he has written in various instrumental genres and in opera. His music has been extensively released on the Delos label, and this latest release features three vocal works and three instrumental ones.
Abel has developed a very personal style, based equally on rock and classical music. The music is tonal yet not closely tied to standard harmonic practices. His basic technique is episodic and seems to be based upon finding ideas through improvisation, consisting of the construction of a series of small musical segments, one following the previous one. Although he creates linkages from one segment to another, the process is rather subjective. You don’t find recapitulations or other indicators of a larger encompassing structure, but this works well for him and leads to much varied and colorful musical imagery.
The most intriguing piece on the program consists of two scenes from The Book of Esther, an opera in development with texts by Kate Gale. The first is “The Maiden Esther,” an aria for Esther, in which she describes her nervousness over meeting King Ahasuerus, who’s considering her as a potential new wife. The other, “Two Queens,” is a duet depicting a hypothetical discussion between Esther and Vashti, Ahasuerus’s deposed first wife. Hila Plitmann inspired the work, and she portrays Esther. I associate Plitmann with breathtaking vocal acrobatics in the altisissimo coloratura register; it’s nice to hear in this instance that she has a sweet, endearing tone in the more standard soprano range. She conveys Esther with great empathy, as she describes the challenges and pressures she faces from the king. Mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich gives a dramatically rich portrayal of Vashti, with a combination of envy, bitterness and understanding. The singers are very ably accompanied by violinist Adam Millstein, clarinetist Max Opferkuch and Dominic Cheli on the piano. I hope the opera will be completed and heard.
The disc opens with Trois Femmes du Cinéma, a suite of homages to French actress/director/writer Anne Wiazemsky, Mexican actress Pina Pellicer and Ukrainian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko. As he frequently does, Abel wrote the lyrics as well as the music. All three women had fascinating careers, tinged with accomplishment and sorrow. The suite is beautifully performed by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and pianist Carol Rosenberger. From the triumphs of Wiazemsky through the tragedy of Pellicer’s all-too-brief life and the resolute determination of Shepitko as she succeeded in spite of Soviet censorship and sexism, the three women are dramatically and sympathetically portrayed.
The modular aspect of Abel’s writing style is most transparent in the three instrumental works on the program--Reconciliation Day for viola (David Samuel) and piano (Cheli); Out the Other Side for violin, cello and piano (Trio Barclay); and The Long March for flute (Christy Kim), horn (Jeff Garza) and piano (Cheli). All three make good use of the ensembles, but also seem to be of arbitrary construction and left me ambiguous.
The album closes with 1966, a set of three songs in which Abel recalls his eighteenth year, when he drove across the country from New York to San Francisco. His texts, two of which were penned that year, depict his early impressions of his new home, his first love affair and an intermediary hike in the mountains of Wyoming. The music is vividly dramatic and poignant, and it’s beautifully performed by Scharich and her longtime collaborator, pianist Jeffrey LaDeur.
Mark Abel’s music might not be not for all tastes, but it will find many sympathetic, devoted listeners.
Textura. org
By Ron Schepper
While appreciation for Mark Abel's music is undeniably enhanced by familiarity with releases such as The Cave of Wondrous Voice (2020), Time and Distance (2018), and Home is a Harbor (2016), it's not required when the double-CD set Spectrum, the sixth album on Delos by the American composer, offers a compact, stand-alone account of his artistry. Comprised of three vocal works and three chamber pieces, the recording is distinguished by Abel's writing but also the performers: sopranos Hila Plitmann, Isabel Bayrakdarian, and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich; pianists Carol Rosenberger, Dominic Cheli, Sean Kennard, and Jeffrey LaDeur; violinists Dennis Kim, Adam Millstein, violist David Samuel, and cellist Jonah Kim; and hornist Jeff Garza, flutist Christy Kim, and clarinetist Max Opferkuch. All involved do much to maximize the allure of Abel's already appealing music.
Though his discography might suggest his professional career had a classical focus from the start, the path that brought Abel to his present roles as classical composer and Delos co-director was circuitous. Like many a teen, he early gravitated to rock and jazz, interests that led, first, to a stint as a NYC-based guitarist, bassist, songwriter, and record producer in the ‘70s and ‘80s and, second, as a journalist. Over time, his childhood affection for classical music re-emerged and became a full-time vocation, bringing him to where he is today.
As these latest works reveal, Abel's beholden to no school in the writing department, and neither are there discernible influences, even if his music sits comfortably within the classical tradition as part of an ongoing continuum. He is, as it were, his own man, a composer who brings his sensibility and highly developed command of craft to a particular idea and illuminates it in strikingly imaginative manner.
Indicative of the personal kernel from which his work grows is Trois Femmes du Cinema, its creation sparked by his love for art films of the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s and its three parts celebrations of Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer, and Larisa Shepitko. In the booklet included with the release, Abel provides mini-bios for each one, a canny move when their names will be unknown to most of today's moviegoers. Smart also was his decision to introduce Spectrum with a work that augments the illustrious vocal artistry of Bayrakdarian with the sensitive accompaniment of Rosenberger. Abel's lyrical writing and the duo's performance accentuate the pathos of lives that ascended to glorious peaks but also endured personal and professional disappointment. Wiazemsky, for example, appeared in films by Bresson, Pasolini, and Godard, and even married the latter, despite a pronounced age difference; when that union ended, however, her career likewise deflated, though she eventually re-established herself in France as a novelist, film director, and screenplay author before dying of cancer in 2017. While Pellicer enjoyed success as an actress in Brando's One-Eyed Jacks and also caught the eye of Alfred Hitchcock, she suffered from depression and ultimately took her life in 1964. Now regarded as an unjustly overlooked figure, Shepitko wasn't an actress but rather a Soviet-era director tragically killed in a 1979 car crash. In true art song fashion, Abel's music replicates the emotional trajectory of the words in each setting, in this case the texts penned by the composer himself.
The release's first disc closes with two ten-minute instrumental works, Reconciliation Day, an expressive and suitably enigmatic viola-and-piano duet essayed magnificently by Samuel and Cheli, and Out the Other Side, a wide-ranging showcase written for and dynamically performed by Trio Barclay members Kim, Kim, and Kennard. Speaking of showcases, the vocal gifts of Plitmann and Scharich are displayed in the second disc's opening work, Two Scenes from “The Book of Esther,” their singing beautifully supported by Cheli, Millstein, and Opferkuch and the text about the biblical heroine written by LA poet Kate Gale. Whereas the first scene, “The Maiden Esther,” features Plitmann alone, “Two Queens” pairs the soprano as Esther with Scharich in the role of Vashti, the queen who's been cast from her throne by the Persian king Ahasuerus. The combination of singer and trio amplifies the intimacy of Esther's soliloquy in the nine-minute first scene and the drama of the spoken-sung encounter between the two women in the fourteen-minute second. Despite the modest instrumental forces in play, the music exudes a compelling neo-orchestral character that suggests how effective it would be performed by a large ensemble.
After The Long March, a thirteen-minute trio excursion unusual for blending flute (Kim), horn (Garza), and piano (Cheli), comes the final vocal work, 1966, Abel again credited with text for the three-part song cycle. Written for and performed by Scharich and LaDeur, the piece reflects on the time the composer turned eighteen and the life-changing events that happened during that period—a romance, a hike, and San Francisco visit. Wistful, nostalgic, and, yes, lyrical, the songs are rendered gracefully by the pair, the outpouring of “First Love” particularly affecting. As stated, one's appreciation for Abel's work is enhanced by familiarity with all of his Delos releases, but Spectrum functions as a fine exemplar of the whole, especially when it features vocal and instrumental works. Best of all, his oft-lyrical, melody-rich material exemplifies exceptional craft and emotional resonance, and at ninety-two minutes, the package manages to be both comprehensive and tidy in its single-volume presentation.
The Journal of Singing
By Gregory Berg
It is good to have another recording of music by Mark Abel, a composer who has a lot to say and has some very intriguing ways of saying it. The collection at hand features a mix of vocal and instrumental works, and everything here is deeply engaging and unfailingly fresh. The composer tells us in his liner notes that this recording represents “both an expansion of horizons and a summing up of the ground traveled during my decade with the Delos label.” Indeed, there is a whiff of the familiar here, but it is balanced by an invigorating sense of new vistas being probed.
This may also be the most deeply personal recording that Abel has yet presented to the public, with several of the works contained herein springing quite directly from the composer’s life experience. The single clearest example of this is 1966, a work that Abel was inspired to compose in the midst of the making of this recording. The title refers to the summer when the country was undergoing exciting yet wrenching changes that ran in parallel to his own personal tumult as he turned eighteen years old. The texts of the first two songs are largely based on poetry that Abel wrote at the time, with some recent tweaks. This is gorgeous, impassioned music, and one can tell that it was very carefully crafted for mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich. Her singing is expressively generous and consistently beautiful; one might only wish that the words were a bit easier to understand. Jeffrey LaDeur partners her with unfailing sensitivity.
Scharich is also heard in Two Scenes from “The Book of Esther.” Abel’s liner notes describe this as “an opera in development,” and these two excerpts sound very promising. The accompaniment (piano, violin and clarinet) creates an intensely exotic atmosphere against which the voices stand out with striking clarity. The first song conveys the anxiety of Esther as she contemplates whether or not she will be regarded with favor by the Persian King Ahasuerus. Soprano Hila Plitmann sings with gleaming freshness and emotional openness. The second song is an invented confrontation between Esther and the ousted Queen Vashti that culminates in clashing sorrows. This is among the most demanding music on this disk, but Plitmann and Scharich are utterly fearless in the face of its challenges. It is the searing intensity of this scene that leads one to hope that Abel will someday complete what he and poet Kate Gale have begun.
The recording opens with perhaps the most colorful work of all, Trois Femmes du Cinema, which is inspired by Abel’s fascination with art house cinema. He has written beautiful texts in honor of three alluring women – Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko – whose work he has long admired. The texts do a remarkable job of conveying the wonder of the cinema and the unique mystique of those who inhabit this world. The poem titled “Anne” begins with these provocative words:
She walked through a long
hall of mirrors,
opened wide to all frontiers
of the possible.
Opened wide to everything
sacred and profane.
Life’s hexagrams unfolding
shifting, sliding
reassembling into new alchemies.
These are flamboyant, rhapsodic songs into which Abel pours a seemingly endless stream of musical ideas. Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, whose voice and artistry has led her to most of the leading opera companies of the world, is exactly the kind of alluring artist that these songs both require and deserve. At the piano is Carol Rosenberger, who has been the lead pianist on the Delos label (and one of its leading artistic forces) since its founding in 1973. Her brilliant playing here represents a stirring and fitting conclusion to her distinguished career.
Abel has considerable gifts for writing vocal music, but it is safe to say that some of the most compelling moments on this disk are actually found in the instrumental pieces. The Long March is especially captivating because of its rare and arresting combination of flute, horn and piano. One would not think these timbres would blend well, but they absolutely do. Reconciliation Day is a deeply enigmatic work for viola and piano that offers a kaleidoscope of contrasting emotions and moods that Abel expertly weaves together. Out the Other Side, like 1966, was composed while this recording was being made and was inspired by the pleasure of collaborating with so many fine musicians. Abel writes of how this piece “packs an array of widely varied punches,” and that says it very well.
Abel’s liner notes are thorough and earnestly written. Full texts of all the songs are included, along with biographies of all the participating musicians as well as the three stars who are celebrated in Trois Femmes du Cinema. The sound quality is as clear and crisp as we have come to expect from Delos.
Copyright © 2023
National Association of Teachers of Singing
The Journal of Singing
Kathleen Roland-Silverstein on Trois Femmes du Cinema
Mark Abel, whose works frequently have been reviewed in this column, is a gifted and fascinating composer. Abel, whose peripatetic interests have led him to a wide range of literary sources, chose to write his own texts for these songs. The texts are effective and insightful, drawing the listener into the intriguing life stories of three women, icons of film in the last century, and all largely unknown. Each song in the cycle is prefaced by a biography of the artist.
Anne Wiazemsky (1947-2017) was an actress, muse and, following her long retreat from public life, a novelist, director and screenplay writer. Anne’s work and life were linked to two formidable figures in the arts, Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022), to whom she was married from 1967 to 1979, and Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). Abel’s first song, “Anne,” aptly illustrates Wiazemsky’s life, led first through connection to the film industry, then through isolation and her ultimate emergence as an important voice for women artists in the second half of the century.
The second song celebrates Pina Pellicer (1934-1964), a Mexican actress admired by Marlon Brando and Alfred Hitchcock, and demonstrates Abel’s profound empathy for the characters he delineates. In the poignant ending of the second song, he quotes from a letter written by Pina before she took her own life.
I believe in human beings, I believe
above all in those who love me
and I am sorry to disappoint them,
but I can’t take it any more.
The final song, “Larisa,” concerns the story of Larisa Shepitko, a Soviet-era director tragically killed in an automobile accident. Her film The Ascent is described by Abel as “very possibly the greatest film ever made about World War II.”
Abel’s signature style, described earlier by this writer as a “color palette of rock, classical and jazz influences,” continues to evolve. His writing here for the piano creates a strong independent voice just translucent enough to join effectively with the almost acrobatic vocal lines. These are wide ranging in all three songs, dipping into the lowest pitches of the female voice and then soaring an octave or more. The shifting tonality is challenging, but not unduly so; likewise the metric fluctuations throughout. These serve the musical and dramatic intent well, and in the hands of an excellent singer and pianist can be absolutely arresting pictures of these women. The composer follows the stresses and nuances of his text unerringly, and the sometimes unsettling melodic leaps only serve to highlight the emotive colors of the texts.
In Trois Femmes du Cinema, Mark Abel has created three commanding and disquieting portraits, bringing to life the singular personalities of these extraordinary women, whose imprint on contemporary life in film was one of strength in the face of despair. All three songs can be heard sung by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian on the recently release Delos recording Mark Abel: Spectrum. Abel’s gorgeous and complex songs are a welcome addition to a body of repertoire that serves to advance women’s voices.
Copyright © 2023
National Association of Teachers of Singing
The Whole Note
By Raul da Gama
Even before you begin to listen to Mark Abel’s Spectrum – a generously packaged double disc of vocal works – you know you’re in for a rare treat. Not only do we meet Isabel Bayrakdarian, a haunting soprano singing emotionally in praise of three women artists we might never have known if Abel had not set their lives to song, but we find ourselves in the thrall of the Jewish heroine Esther, whose strength and cunning prevented the extermination of a fifth-century Jewish community by Haman, the powerful vizier of the Persian King Xerxes.
As if modern lieder on disc one and the operetta Two Scenes from The Book of Esther aren’t enough, Abel also puts his considerable compositional prowess to work on instrumental music performed with immense integrity and authority by Trio Barclay, and other strings, horn and woodwinds, musicians of the highest order, on each of the two discs.
Spectrum is spotlighted by Bayrakdarian and pianist Carol Rosenberger who celebrate the lives of Anne Wiazemsky (1947-2017), Pina Pellicer (1934-1964) and Larisa Shepitko (1938-1979), three icons of modern film on Trois Femmes du Cinema. Abel’s work tells of their courage in holding their own against the power of patriarchal misogyny in the film industry. Meanwhile, soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich glorify the story of Queen Esther. Scharich returns to partner pianist Jeffrey LaDeur in the soul-stirring song cycle 1966 to close out the absolutely unimpeachable Spectrum of music by Abel.
Cinemusical
By Steve Kennedy
Spectrum is a collection of chamber music from composer Mark Abel. It is the sixth release of his work on the Delos label and here focuses on a balance of song cycles and smaller instrumental works. Artists featured here are also intimately connected to the label in some way or another, which makes the collaborations have an additional personal layer. The lyricism of Abel’s music creates instantly engaging music which is enhanced by his dramatic, modern harmonic language.
Opening the first disc is Trois Femmes du Cinema, whose texts Abel wrote to reflect on three international film figures: Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko. “Anne”, the first song, has an almost noir-ish quality in its opening moments. The music itself has a richer, semi-romantic quality with perhaps a touch of the musical stage. It is a quite stunning little work that paves the way for some of the really lovely reflective moments that appear in “Pina.” This piece too has an interesting almost stream-of-consciousness feel that moves through a reflective sketch of her life. Chromaticism and a bit more dissonance come to the fore front in “Larisa.” Each song creates an interesting dramatic compositional approach coupled with interesting shifts into closer intervallic writing that may open up to more traditional arrival points. The cycle is reminiscent of some of the more advanced Sondheim musicals, of which these pieces seem to inhabit as distant cousins.
With texts by Kate Gale, “Two Scenes from the Book of Esther” provides a look at the iconic Biblical heroine. The music here is written for a chamber ensemble and is a sort of preliminary pairing of scenes for an opera-in-development. The opening scene moves us from a young Esther into a confrontation between her and the ousted queen Vashti. The accompaniment patterns sometimes have a little folkish rhythmic feel to them from time to time which adds some forward motion. There are also some quite gorgeous vocal lines as Esther dreams a bit in the first song. It is an interesting diptych of music with a bit more modern dramatic style. Disc two closes with a setting of three songs, 1966, which serve a semi-autobiographical exploration of Abel’s life. The texts are also derived from his own early poetry and connect with his hopes and early life experiences in often beautiful moments.
The first chamber piece is a work for viola and piano. Reconciliation Day has aspects that can be heard in the opening cycle of disc one with its moodier qualities contrasted with burst of sound and forward motion. There is a jazzy, rhythmic feel that has a dance-like quality to help move things along with the calmer sections having a semi-impressionist quality. Out the Other Side is for violin, cello, and piano. A small motivic gesture becomes the launching point for this piece that involves some interesting dialogue between the three lines. The approach is somewhat episodic in nature in its pushing and pulling of musical ideas that come and go in brief spurts of sound. It is also interesting to hear Abel move between the more intense, dissonant segments, into a more traditional, extended harmonic mode. Rhythms also have a jazz edge, even a folkish one at times all leading to a somewhat upbeat, though abrupt ending. Disc two features the third chamber piece, The Long March for flute, horn, and piano. Abel takes us on a musical journey that allows him to explore the unique timbre of these two instruments against the, often exhilarating, piano interactions, including an extended cadenza-like section. The lyrical style here provides some quite stunning music that is enhanced by the performances.
After a couple pages of Abel’s reflections on the pieces here, the accompanying booklet focuses on information about the women of the opening song cycle along with the respective texts. Texts for the other cycles are also included (though the diction of all the performers is excellent on its own, this helps one consider the way the music is set). The bulk of the booklet, though, goes to information about the performers on the recording, which is quite extensive for a project like this. The sound throughout has a nice immediacy, with fine balance and ambience that warms the sound just a bit. The performers are all quite engaging and prove to be excellent advocates for Abel’s music. This is a fine collection of contemporary chamber music with a little bit of something for everyone.
CultureSpot LA
By Henry Schlinger
The Delos label has released two new CDs of contemporary music, broadly defined. The music spans 100 years and dates from the 1920s to 2022. Shapeshifter features the music of the German-Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, who lived from 1894 to 1942. Spectrum features a collection of new works by contemporary American (and Californian) composer Mark Abel. Both Shapeshifter and Spectrum illustrate Delos’ commitment to recording new music even if the music was composed in the 20th century.
Spectrum is Mark Abel’s sixth album for Delos. It features a wide spectrum of Abel’s recent works, including his trademark vocal stylings — two song cycles with texts by the composer and an opera excerpt — and three chamber pieces, one for viola and piano, one for violin, cello and piano, and one for horn, flute and piano.
Abel has been branching out more recently with chamber works for a variety of instruments. For example, Reconciliation Day, for viola and piano (I’m sure viola players will be happy!), moves from contemplative to cheerful but is always evocative. It is played with sensitivity and feeling by pianist Dominic Cheli (who is also the pianist on Shapeshifter) and violist David Samuel.
The title for another piece, The Long March, with its interesting grouping of horn, flute and piano, refers simply to Abel’s journey writing the piece and the performers’ journey in playing it. This time, pianist Cheli is joined by Jeff Garza on horn and Christy Kim on flute. Abel weaves together melodic lines for the three instruments, indeed taking the listener on a satisfying musical journey. Together these musicians admirably render Abel’s adroit writing for these instruments.
Though Abel’s music is as contemporary as it gets (composed within the past couple of years), it is still very accessible with melodic and harmonic lines that pack an emotional punch. On Spectrum, as on his other CDs, Abel brings his unique history of rock, jazz and literary influences to his classical compositions, and the result is a refreshingly distinctive approach to contemporary music.
The music on these two CDs is complementary. Both include writing for small ensembles, and both combine elements of classical and jazz influences. For those listeners interested in hearing music they have never heard before (Schulhoff) or new music (Abel) that is interesting and engaging, we cannot recommend these two CDs enough.
Fanfare
By Henry Fogel
Mark Abel (b. 1948) is an American composer whose background is remarkably varied. He was a journalist who served as foreign editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a New York rock musician with his own bands in the 1970s and 1980s, and then a classical composer. His music is tonal, although at times it stretches tonal boundaries, and he has a genuine melodic gift that serves him well.
The most contemporary-sounding work here is the pair of scenes from The Book of Esther, described by Abel as “a slice of an opera in development.” The music is scored for soprano (Esther) and mezzo-soprano (Vashti, the queen banished by Persian king Ahasuerus), clarinet, violin, and piano. ... The two scenes deal with the banishment of Vashti and the dilemma facing Esther as to whether she should approach the king to convince him to repeal Haman’s order to kill the Jews. I have to say that I admired the score more than I loved it. Soprano Hila Plitmann, a specialist in Abel’s music, throws herself into the part of Esther, and the other performers are fully engaged, but I found the score a bit relentless in its harshness.
I thought everything else on these two discs was considerably more attractive. Trois Femmes du Cinema is a charming tribute to the French actress Anne Wiazemsky, the Mexican actress Pina Pellicer, and the Ukrainian film director and actress Larisa Shepitko. Abel writes of his great love for the films of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and his celebration of all three ladies is beautifully sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian.
Reconciliation Day is accurately described by Abel as “moody.” ... It is scored for viola and piano, and the dark-hued tone of the viola is perfect for the unsettled nature of the music. I found this score particularly lovely.
Out the Other Side was composed for Trio Barclay, in residence at the Barclay Theater at the University of California-Irvine and the performers here. This is the most extroverted music on the program, filled with rhythmic vitality and energy. It shares those qualities with The Long March, composed for a trio of flute, horn, and piano. Another quality that can be heard in much of Abel’s music is humor, and it is puckishly present in The Long March.
1966 was composed for mezzo Kindra Scharich and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur. This is music of nostalgia and recollection. Abel wrote it to evoke the year he turned 18. The music is evocative, with a wistful beauty underlying much of it. The performance is all a composer could ask for.
Abel’s notes are very helpful, and the booklet provides complete texts, for which Delos deserves praise. The recorded sound is well balanced and natural. Although the scenes from The Book of Esther didn’t connect with me, I found a great deal to enjoy in the remainder of the program. Warmly recommended.
Classical-Modern Music Review
By Grego Applegate Edwards
In the ongoing cycles of seasons, events, living and keeping on in my position I can be rather amazed at the sheer number of new composers, less-known composers and new music possibilities one can appreciate in any given season. A very good example of what I have been delving into? That is chamber music and song by one Mark Abel, in an album entitled Spectrum (Delos DE 3592 2CDs). Type his name in the search box and you will see he has been a good example of a lyrical bent for some time.
Listening to this set numerous times reveals a crafter of vibrant melodic-harmonic landscapes of a ravishing sort, perhaps in the footsteps but not the actual shoes of a Samuel Barber (the Knoxville and such). There are some extraordinarily well-wrought song cycles and settings here, all showing a sure sense of the vocal potentials; dramatic and lyric, with heightened musical light like a contemporary sort of Impressionist palette -- not for exclusively for vocalist and pianist but with added instruments at times, such as the very evocative clarinet in "Two Scenes from The Book of Esther."
Happily there are also some strong instrumental chamber works that show a marked lyrical gift, from the melodically mesmerizing "Reconciliation Day" for viola and piano, "Out the Other Side" for piano trio, and "The Long March" for horn, flute and piano. The performances are all you might hope for in a world premiere situation, very well done.
You will probably not think, "What an advanced progressive music is this!" so much as you will appreciate the sheer beauty of it all. You listen, you grow fond of it; I hope you will like it, as I do.
Take Effect Reviews
By Tom Haugen
The esteemed composer Mark Abel brings us two discs of songs and chamber works that spotlight the inimitable talents of vocalists Hila Plitmann, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Kindra Scharich, and also features pianist Dominic Cheli, Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim, Alexander String Quartet violist David Samuel, plus cellist Jonah Kim, horn player Jeff Garza, flutist Christy Kim and pianists Sean Kennard and Jeffrey LaDeur.
“Trois Femmes Du Cinema” opens the listen, with Bayrakdarian’s gorgeous, soaring soprano surrounded by the firm, agile keys of Carol Rosenberger. Abel provides texts about the cult figures Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko.
“Two Scenes From ‘The Book Of Esther’” follows, and recruits stirring strings and Plitmann’s soprano and Scharich’s mezzo-soprano for a sometimes busy setting that’s both tense and pretty amid the precise winds.
Deeper into the album, the cautious strings and warm keys of “Reconciliation Day” get quite animated, while “Out The Other Side” flows with a very introspective appeal, where the instrumentation is often emotive, sometimes lively and even a bit darker on occasion.
The final piece, “1966”, might be the best, and emits so much profound elegance from both the expressive singing and dynamic musicianship that radiates timelessness in its heartfelt execution.
With this stunning body of work, Abel further solidifies himself as a prominent figure in the area of contemporary music. A well-crafted chamber listen.
Praise for "The Cave of Wondrous Voice"
Gramophone
By Donald Rosenberg
The title of this new disc of chamber music by Mark Abel comes from a song cycle set to texts of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). As he has demonstrated on previous recordings of songs and operas, the American composer treats words with shapely care, establishing vibrant and urgent contexts for the interaction of voice and instruments.
Tsvetaeva’s verses make their debut in English in the Abel settings, authoritatively performed here by the soprano Hila Plitmann. The songs take full advantage of Plitmann’s “wondrous voice,” which gleams in all registers, especially when she picks out notes in the stratosphere. Her attention to meaning suffuses every phrase and she is quick to add dramatic intensity when required, as in the emphatic “no!” that ends O sorrow floods my eyes. Sarah Beck’s warm English horn and Carol Rosenberger’s glistening pianism are ideal partners.
Rosenberger is also a dynamic colleague in two pieces with the clarinetist David Shifrin. Intuition’s Dance takes the instruments through a series of conversations ranging from playful to conflicting, with the dance element portrayed in buoyant episodes. The musicians are joined by the cellist Fred Sherry in the Clarinet Trio, three movements of poetic, engaging and philosophical material that these superb players afford colourful and lyrical delineation.
Writing about The Elastic Hours, Abel states that the two movements “follow a near-seismographic path that strongly suggests the subconscious mind’s journey through the course of a day.” Whatever the suggestions, the music is compelling in narrative depth and energy, and the violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli animate the discussions with a bounty of expressive allure.
CultureSpot LA
By Henry Schlinger
The Cave of Wondrous Voice, the latest recording featuring new works by composer Mark Abel, is itself a wondrous creation. It features a variety of chamber music pieces in a traditional style but with a contemporary sound.
The Delos CD includes three chamber works, two for clarinet, including Intuition’s Dance for clarinet and piano and Clarinet Trio, as well as a piece for violin and piano, titled The Elastic Hours, and Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva for soprano, English horn and piano.
The two compositions for clarinet bookend the album, beginning with the wispy Intuition’s Dance, and both works feature renowned performers, clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Carol Rosenberger.
Intuition’s Dance is a light, free-flowing 10-minute dance with waves of clarinet-piano octaves bridging the more traditional clarinet solo with piano accompaniment. The composition vacillates between flights of fancy and more contemplative moments, which Shifrin and Rosenberger handle very nimbly.
Intuition’s Dance is followed by four songs on poems by the Russian poet Tsvetaeva (translated by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie), the first-ever setting of Tsvetaeva’s poetry in English translation. The piece is scored, somewhat unusually, for soprano, piano and English horn. Abel and Hila Plitmann have collaborated before and are on the same wavelength for these songs. Plitmann’s voice is superb, and the juxtaposition with the English horn, played by Sarah Beck adds to the evocative, earthy nature of each song.
The Elastic Hours for violin and piano is performed by the German violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and the American pianist Dominic Cheli. The piece consists of two programmatic movements — “What Friday Brought” and “Saturday’s Circumference” — although, like Beethoven’s sixth symphony, the program is nondescript. As with Intuition’s Dance, The Elastic Hours is part playful and part dreamy but always engaging and melodic enough to be accessible to those listeners who prefer traditional classical music to more contemporary pieces. And, as with the other pieces on this CD, the musicians convey Abel’s intentions admirably.
In the Clarinet Trio, Shifrin and Rosenberger are joined by the renowned cellist Fred Sherry. The Trio consists of three movements, titled, “The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight” and “In Good Time.” In the liner notes to the CD, Abel tells us that “the titles emerged spontaneously some months after the work’s completion in 2017.” The first movement starts off plaintively enough with the cello followed by the clarinet and piano before attaining a forward motion that continues until the last few notes. The movement ends like it begins: plaintively. The second movement is a playful jaunt full of “kinetic energy,” as Abel describes it. The third movement begins mournfully, but then gains more life before ending quietly. Abel scored big in getting these world-class musicians to bring his music to life.
In all of these compositions, Abel shows a remarkable sensitivity in not only composing for the particular instruments, but in expressing himself with them. The music is contemporary, but accessible with melodic and harmonic lines that one notices and remembers. On this CD, Abel has demonstrated a real propensity for chamber music writing. With his previous compositions for voice and piano, he has shown himself to be a composer of lieder, but with The Cave of Wondrous Voice, Abel has announced his arrival as a serious chamber music composer.
Fanfare Magazine
By Colin Clarke
Having previously enjoyed the music of Mark Abel (Time and Distance, reviewed in Fanfare 41:6 and Terrain of the Heart in 37:6), hopes were high for the present release, The Cave of Wondrous Voice. I certainly was not disappointed. Concentrating on works for smaller ensemble, it offers a wide variety of expression, starting with the clarinet piece Intuition’s Dance, ... the first recording that David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger have made together since 1984. The piece offers playfulness interspersed with passages of genuine, heartfelt warmth. Abel’s ability to set up a momentum and to then veer off-piste is genuinely interesting and appealing. It is hard to imagine two finer musicians than Shifrin and Rosenberger. Shifrin has it all, the nimble agility, the nuance of cantabile line; Rosenberger is the perfect partner, ever subtle, her tone delicious.
The mode of utterance grows ever more profound with four settings of the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, in fine translations by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie. The interactions between Hila Plitmann’s soprano voice and Los Angeles English hornist Sarah Beck are beautiful in the first, “The Sibyl,” a song that ends on a most satisfying jazz chord. Quite right that there are two principal protagonists for the second song, “Two trees desire to come together,” two clearly independent voices that react to each other with the suppleness of ballet dancers. Although the English horn part can be replaced by clarinet, one hopes, with respect, that it never is; there is an authenticity of emotion to the present combination. While the first two poems had been written in 1922 and 1919 respectively, Tsvetaeva wrote “O sorrow floods my eyes!” in 1939, shortly after the Nazi invasion of the then-Czechoslovakia. It is, as the text itself says, a “lament of rage and love” with visceral imagery such as “I won’t consent to swim—down streams of human spines”. The force of the final word, “no,” comes across strongly, affording maximal contrast to the short, more pliant “God bent under” (to a poem written in 1916). The cycle ends beautifully but also with something of a musical question mark; the music hangs in the air, enigmatically.
The flexibility of Plitmann’s voice, the almost vocal cantabile of Sarah Beck’s English horn and Rosenberger’s ever-caring playing offer the ideal circumstances in which Abel’s music can thrive. The supreme eloquence of Plitmann, encountered previously on the Time and Distance album, is confirmed here. She has a brilliant way of conveying the direction of a line via the most perfect legato while maintaining exemplary diction: no easy feat.
I thoroughly enjoyed Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker’s Delos recording with Fabio Bidini of the Brahms Hungarian Dances arranged by Joachim (see my review in Fanfare 42:4); given a wider canvas on which to paint here, she impresses still more. The Brahms disc revealed the extent of her technical abilities (and I see she opted for an all-Paganini program for her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019); in The Elastic Hours Abel offers her a road that takes in introspection and reflection. She has an inbuilt understanding of phrase shapes, and can control her sound down to the merest whisper (something pianist Dominic Cheli can match her in). The piece traces the processes of the subconscious mind through two days, firstly “What Friday Brought” then “Saturday’s Circumference”. As a listener, one tends to bend in the wind like a sapling to Abel’s train of thought: and a very pleasant feeling it is, too. It is possible only because of the attunement of Höpcker and her excellent pianist here, Dominic Cheli (a name new to me; a little research brings up a fascinating disc of Clementi on Naxos from 2017).
The dreamscape of the Friday portion of Abel’s piece (and who hasn’t daydreamed their way through a Friday afternoon?) includes many relishable moments, not least Höpcker’s superb intonation when it comes to stopping (including tremolando stopping), while the wonderfully titled “Saturday’s Circumference” contains moments of freedom both in terms of rhythmic joy and in cadenza-like moments. One of Höpcker’s many strengths is to play at speed and allow every note to speak, perfectly in tune. Her next recording is eagerly awaited.
Abel’s Clarinet Trio is cast in three movements, each with a title: “The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight” and “In Good Time”. Shifrin and Rosenberger are joined by the greatly experienced Fred Sherry to make a formidable trio of performers. The way the music evolves in “The Unfolding” is fascinating, a sequence of musings that veer off course, in the way the best relaxed conversations do, before being brought to heel. The peace of the coda seems to be headed towards a serene ending, but actually ends with another question mark; “Taking Flight” takes over, where fluidity of movement is matched by a warmth that at times could only be labelled Brahmsian. Generally, if not completely unruffled, it offers a plateau of gentle respite only temporarily threatened. Throughout, the performers play as if they have been playing together forever, the movement’s final gesture as playful as can be.
The finale “In Good Time,” begins in elegiac mode before rousing itself into a brighter mood (as the composer says, as if “a funeral orator was reminiscing about the deceased’s gentle side until, finally, there’s nothing left to say”. The lamenting neighbour-note figure that threads through the opening does indeed seem to carry quite some weight. Part of those reminiscences seem to carry a touch of jazz about them; the very end is perfectly judged and perfectly satisfying.
Throughout, the recording is everything one has come to expect from Delos: warm, clear, inviting, the perspective and closeness expertly judged.
Five stars: A wide variety of expression in the hands of a group of expert chamber musicians: a glorious release.
Read Colin Clarke's interview with Mark here
The Arts Fuse
By Jonathan Blumhofer
One would find it hard to beat the all-star line-up featured in The Cave of Wondrous Voice, a new, hour-long survey of vocal and chamber music by the California-based composer Mark Abel. David Shifrin, Carol Rosenberger, Hila Plitmann and Fred Sherry headline the album but they’re not its only stars.
There’s a spellbinding performance of Abel’s The Elastic Hours from violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli. It’s arguably the album’s strongest piece, consisting of a pair of movements that thrive on contrasts – of lyrical, folk-like lines and spunky dancing figures, as well as texture, dynamics, and rhythm. Höpcker and Cheli mine them for all they’re worth.
Shifrin and Rosenberger turn in a fluent account of Abel’s amiable Intuition’s Dance, a ten-minute-long curtain-raiser that alternates nimble exchanges for clarinet and piano with dreamy, sometimes reflective passages.
They’re joined by cellist Sherry in Abel’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano. Its three movements are generally songful, the parts often active, with a handful of striking gestures mixed in to the proceedings (like the col legno cello writing in the finale).
Prior to the Trio, Hila Plitmann sings Abel’s Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Written for Plitmann, much of the vocal writing takes advantage of the singer’s astonishing upper register. She shines in this performance, in which she’s ably accompanied by Rosenberger and English hornist Sarah Beck.
On the whole, The Cave of Wondrous Voice is smartly played and engineered. Abel’s writing throughout is fluent and often genial. While certain spots in the Trio, particularly, might benefit from grittier moments to offset the diatonic ones, this is music of considerable expressive directness as well as charm.
The Clarinet
By Kylie Stultz-Dessent
The Cave of Wondrous Voice features the world-premiere recordings of chamber works by American composer Mark Abel. Abel, primarily known for his vocal music, began his career as a rock musician and producer in New York. Abel refers to this album as a milestone in his career due to its focus on instrumental chamber music performed by a team of esteemed musicians.
The first work on the album, Intuition's Dance, is performed by clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Carol Rosenberger. This spirited piece features excitng virtuosity contrasted with moments of thoughtful lyricism. It begins with a sprightly clarinet introduction that sets the tone for the dance music that follows. A strong sense of collaboration is evident between these two musicians. Shifrin's effervescent clarinet tone is supported by Rosenberger's sensitive phrasing.
Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, the lone vocal work on the album, contains the first setting of the Russian poet's works in English translation. Abel, inspired by the song cycles of Dmitri Shostakovich and Sofia Gubaidulina, views his cycle for soprano, English horn and piano as a brief introduction to Tsvetaeva's significant oeuvre. The recording features the exceptional musicianship of soprano Hila Plitmann, English hornist Sarah Beck, and Rosenberger on piano. Plitmann's performance is especially captivating.
The Elastic Hours is a duo for violin and piano. The two movements, entitled "What Friday Brought" and "Saturday's Circumference," are performed sensitively by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli. The final work, Clarinet Trio, again features Rosenberger and Shifrin, joined by cellist Fred Sherry. The first movement, "The Unfolding," creates moments where the three voices come in and out of unity. The second movement features moments of heartfelt lyricism and upbeat rhythmic activity. The finale, "In Good Time," begins with the clarinet and cello alone. This movement alternates between serious and cheerful music before closing serenely. While Clarinet Trio is performed masterfully by all three musicians, Shifrin's inspiring artistry is especially evident in this work.
The liner notes are full of insight into Abel's works and include the artists' biographies, program notes, and the English translations of Tsvetaeva's poems by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie. These works represent a stimulating addition to the chamber music repertoire and are highlighted by the performances of Abel's accomplished collaborators.
Classical-Modern Music Review
By Grego Applegate Edwards
I've covered the music of Mark Abel on these pages before (see articles from April 13, 2012, June 13, 2014, August 20, 2018). I never consciously sought to cover so many. It was one-at-a-time and I've found myself liking and posting on each. Now there is another one, a new one of chamber works, entitled The Cave of Wondrous Voice (Delos DE3570). It features a song cycle and three instrumental works for small chamber configurations.
Generally speaking, this is not music that overtly seeks to call attention to itself by being extroverted-Modern or Avant Garde, nor is there a rock or pop influence in any obvious sense. Nonetheless it is inspired and very well put-together music that would not be mistaken for the music of the past ... . It is straightforwardly intricate, expressive and inventive in good ways, in the best ways.
The first and last works are notable for their evocative and effective usage of the clarinet (David Shifrin)--"Intuition's Dance" for clarinet and piano (with Carol Rosenberger) and the "Clarinet Trio" adding Fred Sherry on cello.
"Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva" features Hila Plitmann's elastically expressive soprano with a plastically definitive Sarah Beck on English horn and Ms. Rosenberger once again well situated at the piano.
Finally, a two-part "The Elastic Hours" pulls together violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker with pianist Dominic Cheli for some of the most appealingly dynamic and alternately energetic music on the album.
What impresses consistently on this program is the beautiful melodic-harmonic poise of it all. One is reminded somewhat of a present-day Bartok in that the music creates an unforced and refreshing stream of inventive form-in-motion like the great Bela's music did so consistently. There is a continual series of musical acrobatics that neither relies upon the expected nor flavor-of-the-month bandwagoneering. That may mean that Mark Abel does not get a lot of attention for being on some cutting edge. The positive side of that is that the music always sounds lucid and relevant and by so doing should attract a wide variety of listeners.
This is rather brilliant written music that is well played. It will appeal to anyone who loves the intimate, "serious" sort of chamber music that speaks directly to the connoisseur of such things. An excellent program. Bravo!
Beyond Criticism
By Matthew Gurewitsch
Mr. Abel. in his time a guitarist, bassist, songwriter and record producer in New York, later foreign editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, is now a composer, most recently of purely instrumental chamber music of originality and allure.
The Cave of Wondrous Voice is sundown music, aglow with somber color and orientalist touches. Serendipity and an Impressionist sensibility (though no overt debt to Debussy) guide the ebb and flow. The low-lying writing for clarinet touches an especially atmospheric chord. Beautiful.
For the record, ... we sampled Abel's album Time and Distance in July 2018 and were taken with that one, too.
AllMusic
By James Manheim
Composer Mark Abel has been known for his distinctive vocal music idiom, late Romantic in its aesthetic but often shading off into dissonance. Soprano Hila Plitmann knows his style well, and she is present here in Abel's Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, with difficult but evocative texts translated into English here for the first time. Tsvetaeva was set by Shostakovich at the end of his life, and by Sofia Gubaidulina at the beginning of her international career.
That will be enough for many art song devotees, but most of the album is devoted to new instrumental music, more tonal and interestingly divergent from the style of Abel's songs. The three-movement Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano is a representative example of the mixture of the programmatic and the abstract in these chamber works. The first movement, "The Unfolding," begins with an open interval on the cello and develops various relationships of the other instruments to it; it's unconventional and absorbing. The other two works, Intuition's Dance and The Elastic Hours, have the same mixture of abstract and evocative, and offer a humorous tone that plays nicely off the serious Tsvetaeva songs. A very worthwhile hour of contemporary music for traditional instruments.
Fanfare Magazine
By Huntley Dent
Listening to these four chamber works by the noted California composer Mark Abel, I enjoyed unraveling his elusive imagination. His idiom, although freely tonal, involves some ingredients that seem cryptic at first. For him, musical ideas, however appealing they might be, are transient, and fruitful themes are briefly stated before being discarded or running out of energy (his terms). Something is always happening in these works but not aiming towards a destination or even wanting one—“introversion will get the final word,” as Abel says of “The Unfolding,” the first movement of his Clarinet Trio. He is a composer, one senses, who is always standing aside and observing himself create.
There are three purely instrumental works on the program, each essentially gentle at heart and ruminative in spirit. The clarinet is the protagonist in the one-movement Intuition’s Dance, whose swaggering opening gives the false impression that we are off to a high-spirited modern jig, but introversion breaks the momentum, and the clarinet’s partner, the piano, has ideas of its own. The result, like Ravel’s La valse, is to use dance as the background for psychology. In Ravel’s case it is the psychology of late-Romantic dissolution. In Abel’s piece it is the restless operation of intuition, which keeps turning back on itself to find fresh ways of saying things. His intuition darts from gesture to gesture very quickly, and the piece is finely balanced between letting seed ideas grow and stepping over them to get to the next snatch of rhythm and melody.
The same procedure, with different instruments, imbues the two other purely instrumental works. The Elastic Hours is a duo for violin and piano whose two movements, “What Friday Brought” and “Saturday’s Circumference,” are deceptively simple if we think that Abel is going to make Friday demanding and hustling while Saturday is relaxed and reposeful. He has set out instead, much like Wallace Stevens, to catch the movement of thought itself and wrap it in art, or as Abel puts it, “the subconscious mind’s journey through the course of a day.” The two instruments play evanescent games with fleeting musical gestures that flicker as capriciously as the mind seems to. The two instruments sometimes coalesce, sharing the same sprightly musical idea, but mainly they stay busy with their own train of self-absorption.
The Clarinet Trio by its title is abstract music in a genre that Abel has loved since a child listening to Brahms’s late op. 114 Trio, but in reality the same psychological activity is present in three movements titled “The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight,” and “In Good Time.” The previous works were duos, but with three voices to deal with, we get a more complex intermingling. This, however, doesn’t alter the essential ambiguous motion that Abel loves to explore. An astute writer, he describes the result better than I could: “… at times achieving forward motion and wandering into thickets of musing, [it is] as if the three players represent aspects of personality losing the thread of what holds them together.” Some artists are plagued by the ambiguity that impels them. I feel that way about Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, wishing that it would just say something.
If Abel’s chamber music risks having the same nebulous impact, his vocal music, in sharp contrast, is rooted in emotional intensity and extremes of expression. He is acutely attuned to women in moods of suffering and mystical transport. That thread is picked up here in Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. The poet is considered an eminent Modernist voice in Russia but is almost unknown in the West, and Abel’s piece is a passionate advocacy for Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), whose brief, torturous, and eventually tragic life reflected the travails of Soviet Russia as movingly as her more famous contemporaries, Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova.
As a young woman Tsvetaeva lived through the October Revolution in 1917 and the hunger that followed, losing a daughter to starvation even after her mother, out of desperation, placed her in a Moscow orphanage. Years of impoverished exile followed in Paris, Berlin, and Prague. When Tsvetaeva returned to Russia in 1941, her husband was arrested and executed on charges of espionage, and she subsequently committed suicide. The four short poems that Abel has eloquently set for soprano, English horn, and piano are highly emotional but at the same time obscure. Abel has a bent for oracular and mythic themes, so he resonates with the first poem “Sibyl,” which is about a decaying tree that is actually the grave of an oracle who is granted new life by God, only briefly, before she vanishes into the stars.
Here, I feel, Abel is at his strongest, most original, and intensely personal. A longtime collaborator, soprano Hila Plitmann, uses her agile voice with unfailing courage to undertake Abel’s extreme vocal demands, often going into a very high tessitura as well as anguished shouting. The least obscure poem is “Oh sorrow floods my eyes,” a protest against totalitarianism, whether Nazi or Soviet, that ends in a defiant cry of “No!” As difficult as it is, we are told, to translate Tsvetaeva’s allusive Russian into English, it is not hard to see why she is considered a genius as well as a witness to terrible times. Abel’s complex, dense writing does full justice to this mixture of beauty, prophetic insight, and terror.
Like John Harbison, Abel represents the best strain in contemporary American composers who can merge their musical gifts with a sensitive, far-reaching intellect. He brings up to date the strain of literary delving found in Schumann and Debussy. I’ll concede that this is what I most value here, but the instrumental works also update Debussy’s love of ambiguity as a viable method of creative expression. As the headnote indicates, the performers include acclaimed musicians on the order of Carol Rosenberger, David Shifrin and Fred Sherry, described by Abel as pillars of American music-making. But the newer names represent the same high level of skill, commitment, and artistry. Abel is grateful to them, and he is right to be. The performances are impeccable.
Altogether, this release is the latest installment in Abel’s ongoing musical and autobiographical journal. It is a thoroughly rewarding listen that also manages to be moving and thought-provoking, too.
ConcertoNet
By Christie Grimstad
Mark Abel is a moving target … his mind having a boatload of ideas. Taking in life as a journalist, a rock band composer and producer has given him exposure to a myriad of concepts. It wasn’t until 2012 when “The Dream Gallery,” a seven-movement cycle, was released that pianist (and Delos label director) Carol Rosenberger perked up her ears, finding something uniquely absorbing. Now comes Delos’ fifth Abel release, "The Cave of Wondrous Voice," which jumps back to chamber music, and in a certain way, pays homage to Abel's father, an admirer of the genre.
Borrowing its title from Marina Tsvetaeva’s The Sybil, the CD is a wonderment of powerful words and musical footprints that has a ubiquitous outreach. Merely reading the poetic text by the Russian is emotionally absorbing. While merely flatlined at times (and most certainly in “O sorrow floods my eyes!”), Tsvetaeva takes ever-so-small steps of abrogation, repealing hurt and replacing it with slivers of hope. Abel’s lines require an extremely high tessitura, music that's well-suited for Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann. In a propulsion of unsettledness and like a mighty javelin, her voice pierces the heart: remarkable candor and starkness. Sybil, the proverbial soothsayer, has the power to retract and regain. Mlle. Plitmann cuts into our soul with a timbre that’s omniscient and omnipresent. What a scope!
If a comical interlude “tickles your toes,” then the opening Intuition’s Dance is the one to visit. This spiky dialogue between Rosenberger and David Shifrin’s clarinet dances on a whim and a fancy, caked with options by two strong-headed characters. The piece is bubbly.
Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker uses some of the most inventive violin techniques to build her ideas inside The Elastic Hours. Her notes are sharply poised and, occasionally, ambiguous in thought. Focusing on two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, they abound in universality. Friday’s the end of a long work week (“What Friday Brought”) … too much; Saturday (“Saturday Circumference”) simply moves along with a “kick back and relax” mentality ... but does it, really? Dominic Cheli’s piano introspections have a broader narration on the weekend. The musical episodes aren’t imagined as “anticipating”; rather, they’re randomized events and nonrecurring, having unique meaning to each and every one of us. The spat with a nightmarish tumult must be stifled by a shift into some placid moments by Cheli. Saturday should be a respite, but, maybe anxiety has already set in, thinking ahead about the coming week. Can't we all relate?
Due to paternal persuasions, Abel’s affinity toward Brahms’s Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, made an indelible impression. Inside the composer’s own Clarinet Trio, the tripartite consortium has more introspection and a deeper grain … . Fred Sherry slices away at the dense matter of resolve, as if in a perfecting array. Tempering the tensions, Carol Rosenberger is never far away from the freedom to advance her own “opinion” about the piece. Patience upon “The Unfolding” unveils, retracts, unveils, then, more broadly-speaking, channels a more poignant conversation. To that extent, Sherry has the last draw to the movement. The ensuing “In Good Time” is drenched in a large cloth of sobriety … steep and dank. The cello gives a flickering "pat on the back" to Ralph Vaughan Williams while col legno battuto is exercised (4’05) to anxious effect. As if to close out the piece in a ray of sunshine, the performers resort to placidity (5’23) in a quasi-Copland ode to The Tender Land.
Mark Abel’s new album is an invigorating trek. When all is said and done, "The Cave of Wondrous Voice" speaks to every individual. After all, life is one big circumference … it keeps on repeating itself. Beguiling.
The Whole Note
By Tiina Kiik
California-based composer Mark Abel explains in the liner notes that his father was a “devotee” of such classical chamber music composers as Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven and Dvořák, which clearly influenced his emotionally driven compositions grounded in modern and classical styles.
Abel is renowned for his vocal works. His exciting song cycle Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva features four Russian poems translated to English for the first time by Alyssa Dinega Gilliespie. Soprano Hila Plitmann sings with dramatic clarity, musicality, tuning and high pitches. Carol Rosenberger (piano) and Sarah Beck (English horn) support with technical/musical control as the words and music are one.
Diverse tonal and stylistic storytelling is featured in Abel’s chamber works. Intuition’s Dance features Rosenberger and clarinetist David Shifrin playing contrasting happy bouncy faster, and slower spooky lyrical sections. Cellist Fred Sherry joins them in the three-movement Clarinet Trio in which they each are almost soloists, especially in Taking Flight, with its energetic pulsing opening, and upbeat jazz-flavoured closing.
Another wordless musical story suggesting “the subconscious mind’s journey through the course of the day” is The Elastic Hours, performed by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli. What Friday Brought opens with a positive end-of-the-work-week mood until stuff happens with moody tremolos, and held notes. Saturday’s Circumference is a driving tonal duet featuring intermittent happy toe-tapping and slower reflective sections.
Abel is a compositional master of intriguing contemporary music.
The Journal of Singing
Kathleen Roland-Silverstein on Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva
The songs of two of the composers featured in this month’s column are already known to singers, pianists, and voice teachers through past reviews in this column. Lori Laitman and Mark Abel are prolific art song creators, each with an ear for superb poetry and a gift for envisioning settings of those poems for specific voices.
Mark Abel has written for the unique voice of noted contemporary soprano Hila Plitmann before, notably in The Palm Trees are Restless (2016) and Those Who Loved Medusa (2017). His song cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness won Honorable Mention in the NATS Art Song Competition in 2018. Abel’s color palette of rock, classical and jazz influences, and his impressive sensitivity to vocal color and capability, make these newest songs especially attractive options for a flexible, high tessitura soprano ... .
Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s texts, translated into English and used here for the first time in art song (another notable composer who has set her poetry in the original Russian was Dmitri Shostakovich), conjure up vivid images from the many sources that inspired her, including mythology, political upheaval and her own personal experiences.
The texts have fueled vivid musical settings in this cycle, reflecting the composer’s continuing engagement with sometimes less well known, even obscure, poetry. The composer mellifluously intertwines the high soprano voice, and piano texture ranging from dense to spare, with the unique inclusion of English horn (or Bb clarinet) as the third instrument. The piano score alternates between jagged harmonies with large leaps, and arpeggiated, warm tonal colors. The reedy, warm quality of the English horn evokes distinct textual pairings, from the ancient instrumental sound in the first song about the Greek oracle, The Sibyl, to the plaintive lament of O Sorrow Floods My Eyes. The music is challenging, with frequent leaps and tempo changes for all members of the ensemble, although there is a real sense of unified purpose in each song. The vocal line is frequently but unobtrusively doubled by the piano or the English horn.
Copyright © 2020
National Association of Teachers of Singing
Pizzicato Magazine
By Uwe Krusch
(English translation by Lindsay Koob)
The premiere recordings of American composer Mark Abel's chamber works in the album "The
Cave of Wondrous Voice" once again show him to be someone who, in his youth, eagerly
absorbed the great classical- and romantic-era musical traditions, but who now updates those
styles with more contemporary ideas and idioms.
The opening work, Intuition’s Dance for clarinet and piano, begins with a rigorous
development, which then breaks off and explores new paths without reaching a final
conclusion. Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva constitutes a homage to the Russian poet, setting
to music for the first time in English translation verses whose multilayered levels can hardly be
verbally expressed. The Elastic Hours is, in effect, a two-movement violin sonata in disguise, in
which developments and sudden breaks—especially on subconscious levels— illustrate the very
different courses of consecutive weekdays … . The lovely Clarinet Trio completes the recording.
Brahms' great Op. 114 clarinet trio (as well as the original Russian language settings of the Tsvetaeva
poems) served Abel more as stimulation and inspiration rather than a burden.
The composer was able to enlist truly outstanding artists from among his circle of accomplished
friends to bring his creations to vibrant musical life. Their devotion to the music at hand is
heard in their collective ability to shape and sustain their interpretations. Clarinetist David
Shifrin and soprano Hila Plitmann may be the best-known artists on the recording. Shifrin's
sensitive approach and Plitmann's distinctive vocal expressiveness are the cornerstones of this
collection. But in The Elastic Hours, violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker knows how to generate
appeal with her resonant tones. The keyboard talents of pianists Carol Rosenberger and
Dominic Cheli add spice to the music.
Considering Mark Abel's heretofore vocally dominant oeuvre, the chamber compositions heard
here present expressive possibilities well worth hearing.
Hollywood Soapbox.com
By John Soltes
Mark Abel recently released a new album of chamber music called The Cave of Wondrous Voice, featuring four pieces — “Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva,” “Clarinet Trio,” “Intuition’s Dance” and “The Elastic Hours.” The effort serves as a quality example of Abel’s recent fascination and mastery of the chamber art form.
The recording has been in the works for quite some time — long before the coronavirus hit. Now, when the music world has been ordered to stay home and think of unique ways to share their art, Abel has moved ahead with the album’s release, with the hope that quarantined listeners are yearning for something unique to enjoy.
“As is often the case with composers, some of the pieces recorded are discrete projects, others of them are the best stuff that you produced recently, and you just want to get it out there,” Abel said in a phone interview. “But I think the main thrust behind this release is the fact that it’s the first chamber music that has come out under my name. I’ve done five albums for Delos, and all of the previous stuff has been vocal music, ranging from opera to orchestral song cycles to solo songs to various other permutations.
“Vocal music is something I have a kind of built-in affinity for, and [I] was once a rock musician many, many years ago. But chamber music has always been a tough nut for me to crack, and some inner blocks that I’ve had about it finally dissolved, magically. I can’t even explain why, [but] about three years ago I started writing chamber pieces and eventually felt that I had three viable ones. And I found some terrific people who wanted to record them.”
Those terrific people who helped him along the way are clarinetist David Shifrin, cellist Fred Sherry and pianist Carol Rosenberger. He also was aided by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker, pianist Dominic Cheli and hornist Sarah Beck.
“The earliest of these chamber pieces is a clarinet trio. That’s a combination of instruments that hasn’t been exploited as much as you would expect considering what a wonderful combination it is,” he said. “The piece that means the most to pretty much everybody in that sphere is the Brahms clarinet trio, which I’ve known since I was a kid. I definitely felt it was a challenge to write something using the tools he had at his disposal.”
The challenge was overcome when something “clicked” in Abel’s brain. He doesn’t know what was preventing him from composing effective chamber music before, but he jumped over any hurdles and began to work in earnest on his clarinet trio. “I was able to turn out what I think is a credible piece,” he said. “That boosted my spirits to the point where I have since written a violin piece, “The Elastic Hours,” and a duo that David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger play called “Intuition’s Dance.”
The fascination with chamber music has not stopped since the album’s release. He is currently working on a cello sonata that he hopes to record in the future.
Abel has been working with Delos since 2012, when he first made the connection with Rosenberger. They have become good friends over the years. “She had a very long and successful recording career herself, and played on two pieces on my previous album,” he said. “She hadn’t recorded for about 15 years, but she likes my music a lot.
“David Shifrin I have known as a recording artist for a long time, and I’ve seen him play live a few times. I finally got a chance to meet him a couple of years ago. When I showed him the clarinet trio, he said he wanted to perform it at his chamber music festival in Portland, Chamber Music Northwest -- a heaven-sent development for me. So he, Fred Sherry and another pianist premiered it in 2018, and we recorded it last fall.”
Composing and playing chamber music, with its relatively small number of instruments, has presented Abel with a welcome challenge, which at this point in his career he is more than ready to oblige. He has already found success with his vocal collaborations with Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann, and has set poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetaeva, Pablo Neruda and California poets Kate Gale and Joanne Regenhardt. His résumé also boasts many years as a journalist and a few as a rock musician.
“I’ve been writing vocal music for so long that I have a fair amount of fluidity with it,” he said. “It’s been the repository of the most interesting musical ideas that I’ve had up to this point, but (with) chamber music, organic flow is what makes it successful (or not). It was very frustrating because I feel I achieved the flow aspect in my vocal music, but something was not letting me let go and find the kind of freedom I don’t have any trouble accessing when I’m writing vocal music. … My early unsuccessful attempts at chamber writing were stiff-sounding and too calculated. They didn’t have the illusion of spontaneity that you must write into the music.”
Now that stiffness and calculation are long gone, and Abel has entered the cave of wondrous voice.
Fanfare Magazine
By Raymond Tuttle
In reviewing another composer’s work, I recently got myself in Dutch by hearing jazz influences in the music that apparently were not there. This time around, the shoe is on the other foot. Composer Mark Abel’s website says that his hybridized style melds classical music and rock. ... That might be true of other works that he has composed, but I don’t hear any of that here. To me, this is straight-ahead classical music, albeit not easy to describe in terms of possible stylistic influences, although on his website he cites many composers who have inspired him. His website also mentions his “strong gift for melody,” which implies something different to me than what it seems to mean here. None of this is meant negatively; it just goes to show that no two people hearing the same piece of music are going to hear precisely the same things.
Mark Abel spent his younger years in the rock world—playing guitar and bass, writing songs, producing records, and working with legends such as Tom Verlaine and The Feelies. In the 1980s, he moved into journalism, and in recent years he has focused on composing—he is self-taught, by the way—and there have been several releases on the Delos label prior to this one. It goes by the name "The Cave of Wondrous Voice," and where it differs from its predecessors is in the emphasis on non-vocal chamber music, with the exception of Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, for soprano, English horn, and piano. ... The cycle is billed as the first-ever setting of Tsvetaeva’s poetry in English translations. This helps us to appreciate the moment-to-moment sensitivity of Abel’s responses to the texts. Indeed, some of the writing is melodic, in the sense of “tuneful,” but Abel seems more interested in reflecting the ever-shifting moods of the texts than in providing an undemanding ear-bath for the listener. Soprano Hila Plitmann keeps up with Abel’s challenging writing, and then some ... .
... In Intuition’s Dance, for clarinet and piano, the two musicians are equal partners. The forthright first section finds them in a cooperative mood, but in the middle of the work they seem to experience a crisis of confidence; several times the piano tries to get the clarinet to respond, and finally, in the last section of the work, it succeeds. David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger, both veteran performers, glide through the music’s changeability without batting an eyelash. The Elastic Hours, for violin and piano, is in two movements: “What Friday Brought” and “Saturday’s Circumference.” Here too, the music has a “this ... this ... and now that” sensibility that suggests a story being told or a diary being written. This is a good workout for the two young performers, Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and Dominic Cheli. The Clarinet Trio (clarinet, cello, and piano) is in three movements (“The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight,” and “In Good Time”), and was inspired, at least partly, by Abel’s childhood recollections of hearing Brahms’s trio for this same combination of instruments. Again, in the first movement there is the idea that the three instruments have human personalities, including human impatience. Cellist Fred Sherry, now in his 70s, nevertheless adds his own youthful suppleness to the contributions of Shifrin and Rosenberger.
The music—all of Abel’s music that I have heard—seems driven more by impulses and intuition than by academic concerns for form and development. However, given the relatively short length of these works, that is not much of a fault, if it is even a fault at all.
By Donald Rosenberg
The title of this new disc of chamber music by Mark Abel comes from a song cycle set to texts of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). As he has demonstrated on previous recordings of songs and operas, the American composer treats words with shapely care, establishing vibrant and urgent contexts for the interaction of voice and instruments.
Tsvetaeva’s verses make their debut in English in the Abel settings, authoritatively performed here by the soprano Hila Plitmann. The songs take full advantage of Plitmann’s “wondrous voice,” which gleams in all registers, especially when she picks out notes in the stratosphere. Her attention to meaning suffuses every phrase and she is quick to add dramatic intensity when required, as in the emphatic “no!” that ends O sorrow floods my eyes. Sarah Beck’s warm English horn and Carol Rosenberger’s glistening pianism are ideal partners.
Rosenberger is also a dynamic colleague in two pieces with the clarinetist David Shifrin. Intuition’s Dance takes the instruments through a series of conversations ranging from playful to conflicting, with the dance element portrayed in buoyant episodes. The musicians are joined by the cellist Fred Sherry in the Clarinet Trio, three movements of poetic, engaging and philosophical material that these superb players afford colourful and lyrical delineation.
Writing about The Elastic Hours, Abel states that the two movements “follow a near-seismographic path that strongly suggests the subconscious mind’s journey through the course of a day.” Whatever the suggestions, the music is compelling in narrative depth and energy, and the violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli animate the discussions with a bounty of expressive allure.
CultureSpot LA
By Henry Schlinger
The Cave of Wondrous Voice, the latest recording featuring new works by composer Mark Abel, is itself a wondrous creation. It features a variety of chamber music pieces in a traditional style but with a contemporary sound.
The Delos CD includes three chamber works, two for clarinet, including Intuition’s Dance for clarinet and piano and Clarinet Trio, as well as a piece for violin and piano, titled The Elastic Hours, and Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva for soprano, English horn and piano.
The two compositions for clarinet bookend the album, beginning with the wispy Intuition’s Dance, and both works feature renowned performers, clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Carol Rosenberger.
Intuition’s Dance is a light, free-flowing 10-minute dance with waves of clarinet-piano octaves bridging the more traditional clarinet solo with piano accompaniment. The composition vacillates between flights of fancy and more contemplative moments, which Shifrin and Rosenberger handle very nimbly.
Intuition’s Dance is followed by four songs on poems by the Russian poet Tsvetaeva (translated by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie), the first-ever setting of Tsvetaeva’s poetry in English translation. The piece is scored, somewhat unusually, for soprano, piano and English horn. Abel and Hila Plitmann have collaborated before and are on the same wavelength for these songs. Plitmann’s voice is superb, and the juxtaposition with the English horn, played by Sarah Beck adds to the evocative, earthy nature of each song.
The Elastic Hours for violin and piano is performed by the German violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and the American pianist Dominic Cheli. The piece consists of two programmatic movements — “What Friday Brought” and “Saturday’s Circumference” — although, like Beethoven’s sixth symphony, the program is nondescript. As with Intuition’s Dance, The Elastic Hours is part playful and part dreamy but always engaging and melodic enough to be accessible to those listeners who prefer traditional classical music to more contemporary pieces. And, as with the other pieces on this CD, the musicians convey Abel’s intentions admirably.
In the Clarinet Trio, Shifrin and Rosenberger are joined by the renowned cellist Fred Sherry. The Trio consists of three movements, titled, “The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight” and “In Good Time.” In the liner notes to the CD, Abel tells us that “the titles emerged spontaneously some months after the work’s completion in 2017.” The first movement starts off plaintively enough with the cello followed by the clarinet and piano before attaining a forward motion that continues until the last few notes. The movement ends like it begins: plaintively. The second movement is a playful jaunt full of “kinetic energy,” as Abel describes it. The third movement begins mournfully, but then gains more life before ending quietly. Abel scored big in getting these world-class musicians to bring his music to life.
In all of these compositions, Abel shows a remarkable sensitivity in not only composing for the particular instruments, but in expressing himself with them. The music is contemporary, but accessible with melodic and harmonic lines that one notices and remembers. On this CD, Abel has demonstrated a real propensity for chamber music writing. With his previous compositions for voice and piano, he has shown himself to be a composer of lieder, but with The Cave of Wondrous Voice, Abel has announced his arrival as a serious chamber music composer.
Fanfare Magazine
By Colin Clarke
Having previously enjoyed the music of Mark Abel (Time and Distance, reviewed in Fanfare 41:6 and Terrain of the Heart in 37:6), hopes were high for the present release, The Cave of Wondrous Voice. I certainly was not disappointed. Concentrating on works for smaller ensemble, it offers a wide variety of expression, starting with the clarinet piece Intuition’s Dance, ... the first recording that David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger have made together since 1984. The piece offers playfulness interspersed with passages of genuine, heartfelt warmth. Abel’s ability to set up a momentum and to then veer off-piste is genuinely interesting and appealing. It is hard to imagine two finer musicians than Shifrin and Rosenberger. Shifrin has it all, the nimble agility, the nuance of cantabile line; Rosenberger is the perfect partner, ever subtle, her tone delicious.
The mode of utterance grows ever more profound with four settings of the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, in fine translations by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie. The interactions between Hila Plitmann’s soprano voice and Los Angeles English hornist Sarah Beck are beautiful in the first, “The Sibyl,” a song that ends on a most satisfying jazz chord. Quite right that there are two principal protagonists for the second song, “Two trees desire to come together,” two clearly independent voices that react to each other with the suppleness of ballet dancers. Although the English horn part can be replaced by clarinet, one hopes, with respect, that it never is; there is an authenticity of emotion to the present combination. While the first two poems had been written in 1922 and 1919 respectively, Tsvetaeva wrote “O sorrow floods my eyes!” in 1939, shortly after the Nazi invasion of the then-Czechoslovakia. It is, as the text itself says, a “lament of rage and love” with visceral imagery such as “I won’t consent to swim—down streams of human spines”. The force of the final word, “no,” comes across strongly, affording maximal contrast to the short, more pliant “God bent under” (to a poem written in 1916). The cycle ends beautifully but also with something of a musical question mark; the music hangs in the air, enigmatically.
The flexibility of Plitmann’s voice, the almost vocal cantabile of Sarah Beck’s English horn and Rosenberger’s ever-caring playing offer the ideal circumstances in which Abel’s music can thrive. The supreme eloquence of Plitmann, encountered previously on the Time and Distance album, is confirmed here. She has a brilliant way of conveying the direction of a line via the most perfect legato while maintaining exemplary diction: no easy feat.
I thoroughly enjoyed Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker’s Delos recording with Fabio Bidini of the Brahms Hungarian Dances arranged by Joachim (see my review in Fanfare 42:4); given a wider canvas on which to paint here, she impresses still more. The Brahms disc revealed the extent of her technical abilities (and I see she opted for an all-Paganini program for her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019); in The Elastic Hours Abel offers her a road that takes in introspection and reflection. She has an inbuilt understanding of phrase shapes, and can control her sound down to the merest whisper (something pianist Dominic Cheli can match her in). The piece traces the processes of the subconscious mind through two days, firstly “What Friday Brought” then “Saturday’s Circumference”. As a listener, one tends to bend in the wind like a sapling to Abel’s train of thought: and a very pleasant feeling it is, too. It is possible only because of the attunement of Höpcker and her excellent pianist here, Dominic Cheli (a name new to me; a little research brings up a fascinating disc of Clementi on Naxos from 2017).
The dreamscape of the Friday portion of Abel’s piece (and who hasn’t daydreamed their way through a Friday afternoon?) includes many relishable moments, not least Höpcker’s superb intonation when it comes to stopping (including tremolando stopping), while the wonderfully titled “Saturday’s Circumference” contains moments of freedom both in terms of rhythmic joy and in cadenza-like moments. One of Höpcker’s many strengths is to play at speed and allow every note to speak, perfectly in tune. Her next recording is eagerly awaited.
Abel’s Clarinet Trio is cast in three movements, each with a title: “The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight” and “In Good Time”. Shifrin and Rosenberger are joined by the greatly experienced Fred Sherry to make a formidable trio of performers. The way the music evolves in “The Unfolding” is fascinating, a sequence of musings that veer off course, in the way the best relaxed conversations do, before being brought to heel. The peace of the coda seems to be headed towards a serene ending, but actually ends with another question mark; “Taking Flight” takes over, where fluidity of movement is matched by a warmth that at times could only be labelled Brahmsian. Generally, if not completely unruffled, it offers a plateau of gentle respite only temporarily threatened. Throughout, the performers play as if they have been playing together forever, the movement’s final gesture as playful as can be.
The finale “In Good Time,” begins in elegiac mode before rousing itself into a brighter mood (as the composer says, as if “a funeral orator was reminiscing about the deceased’s gentle side until, finally, there’s nothing left to say”. The lamenting neighbour-note figure that threads through the opening does indeed seem to carry quite some weight. Part of those reminiscences seem to carry a touch of jazz about them; the very end is perfectly judged and perfectly satisfying.
Throughout, the recording is everything one has come to expect from Delos: warm, clear, inviting, the perspective and closeness expertly judged.
Five stars: A wide variety of expression in the hands of a group of expert chamber musicians: a glorious release.
Read Colin Clarke's interview with Mark here
The Arts Fuse
By Jonathan Blumhofer
One would find it hard to beat the all-star line-up featured in The Cave of Wondrous Voice, a new, hour-long survey of vocal and chamber music by the California-based composer Mark Abel. David Shifrin, Carol Rosenberger, Hila Plitmann and Fred Sherry headline the album but they’re not its only stars.
There’s a spellbinding performance of Abel’s The Elastic Hours from violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli. It’s arguably the album’s strongest piece, consisting of a pair of movements that thrive on contrasts – of lyrical, folk-like lines and spunky dancing figures, as well as texture, dynamics, and rhythm. Höpcker and Cheli mine them for all they’re worth.
Shifrin and Rosenberger turn in a fluent account of Abel’s amiable Intuition’s Dance, a ten-minute-long curtain-raiser that alternates nimble exchanges for clarinet and piano with dreamy, sometimes reflective passages.
They’re joined by cellist Sherry in Abel’s Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano. Its three movements are generally songful, the parts often active, with a handful of striking gestures mixed in to the proceedings (like the col legno cello writing in the finale).
Prior to the Trio, Hila Plitmann sings Abel’s Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Written for Plitmann, much of the vocal writing takes advantage of the singer’s astonishing upper register. She shines in this performance, in which she’s ably accompanied by Rosenberger and English hornist Sarah Beck.
On the whole, The Cave of Wondrous Voice is smartly played and engineered. Abel’s writing throughout is fluent and often genial. While certain spots in the Trio, particularly, might benefit from grittier moments to offset the diatonic ones, this is music of considerable expressive directness as well as charm.
The Clarinet
By Kylie Stultz-Dessent
The Cave of Wondrous Voice features the world-premiere recordings of chamber works by American composer Mark Abel. Abel, primarily known for his vocal music, began his career as a rock musician and producer in New York. Abel refers to this album as a milestone in his career due to its focus on instrumental chamber music performed by a team of esteemed musicians.
The first work on the album, Intuition's Dance, is performed by clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Carol Rosenberger. This spirited piece features excitng virtuosity contrasted with moments of thoughtful lyricism. It begins with a sprightly clarinet introduction that sets the tone for the dance music that follows. A strong sense of collaboration is evident between these two musicians. Shifrin's effervescent clarinet tone is supported by Rosenberger's sensitive phrasing.
Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, the lone vocal work on the album, contains the first setting of the Russian poet's works in English translation. Abel, inspired by the song cycles of Dmitri Shostakovich and Sofia Gubaidulina, views his cycle for soprano, English horn and piano as a brief introduction to Tsvetaeva's significant oeuvre. The recording features the exceptional musicianship of soprano Hila Plitmann, English hornist Sarah Beck, and Rosenberger on piano. Plitmann's performance is especially captivating.
The Elastic Hours is a duo for violin and piano. The two movements, entitled "What Friday Brought" and "Saturday's Circumference," are performed sensitively by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli. The final work, Clarinet Trio, again features Rosenberger and Shifrin, joined by cellist Fred Sherry. The first movement, "The Unfolding," creates moments where the three voices come in and out of unity. The second movement features moments of heartfelt lyricism and upbeat rhythmic activity. The finale, "In Good Time," begins with the clarinet and cello alone. This movement alternates between serious and cheerful music before closing serenely. While Clarinet Trio is performed masterfully by all three musicians, Shifrin's inspiring artistry is especially evident in this work.
The liner notes are full of insight into Abel's works and include the artists' biographies, program notes, and the English translations of Tsvetaeva's poems by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie. These works represent a stimulating addition to the chamber music repertoire and are highlighted by the performances of Abel's accomplished collaborators.
Classical-Modern Music Review
By Grego Applegate Edwards
I've covered the music of Mark Abel on these pages before (see articles from April 13, 2012, June 13, 2014, August 20, 2018). I never consciously sought to cover so many. It was one-at-a-time and I've found myself liking and posting on each. Now there is another one, a new one of chamber works, entitled The Cave of Wondrous Voice (Delos DE3570). It features a song cycle and three instrumental works for small chamber configurations.
Generally speaking, this is not music that overtly seeks to call attention to itself by being extroverted-Modern or Avant Garde, nor is there a rock or pop influence in any obvious sense. Nonetheless it is inspired and very well put-together music that would not be mistaken for the music of the past ... . It is straightforwardly intricate, expressive and inventive in good ways, in the best ways.
The first and last works are notable for their evocative and effective usage of the clarinet (David Shifrin)--"Intuition's Dance" for clarinet and piano (with Carol Rosenberger) and the "Clarinet Trio" adding Fred Sherry on cello.
"Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva" features Hila Plitmann's elastically expressive soprano with a plastically definitive Sarah Beck on English horn and Ms. Rosenberger once again well situated at the piano.
Finally, a two-part "The Elastic Hours" pulls together violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker with pianist Dominic Cheli for some of the most appealingly dynamic and alternately energetic music on the album.
What impresses consistently on this program is the beautiful melodic-harmonic poise of it all. One is reminded somewhat of a present-day Bartok in that the music creates an unforced and refreshing stream of inventive form-in-motion like the great Bela's music did so consistently. There is a continual series of musical acrobatics that neither relies upon the expected nor flavor-of-the-month bandwagoneering. That may mean that Mark Abel does not get a lot of attention for being on some cutting edge. The positive side of that is that the music always sounds lucid and relevant and by so doing should attract a wide variety of listeners.
This is rather brilliant written music that is well played. It will appeal to anyone who loves the intimate, "serious" sort of chamber music that speaks directly to the connoisseur of such things. An excellent program. Bravo!
Beyond Criticism
By Matthew Gurewitsch
Mr. Abel. in his time a guitarist, bassist, songwriter and record producer in New York, later foreign editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, is now a composer, most recently of purely instrumental chamber music of originality and allure.
The Cave of Wondrous Voice is sundown music, aglow with somber color and orientalist touches. Serendipity and an Impressionist sensibility (though no overt debt to Debussy) guide the ebb and flow. The low-lying writing for clarinet touches an especially atmospheric chord. Beautiful.
For the record, ... we sampled Abel's album Time and Distance in July 2018 and were taken with that one, too.
AllMusic
By James Manheim
Composer Mark Abel has been known for his distinctive vocal music idiom, late Romantic in its aesthetic but often shading off into dissonance. Soprano Hila Plitmann knows his style well, and she is present here in Abel's Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, with difficult but evocative texts translated into English here for the first time. Tsvetaeva was set by Shostakovich at the end of his life, and by Sofia Gubaidulina at the beginning of her international career.
That will be enough for many art song devotees, but most of the album is devoted to new instrumental music, more tonal and interestingly divergent from the style of Abel's songs. The three-movement Trio for clarinet, cello, and piano is a representative example of the mixture of the programmatic and the abstract in these chamber works. The first movement, "The Unfolding," begins with an open interval on the cello and develops various relationships of the other instruments to it; it's unconventional and absorbing. The other two works, Intuition's Dance and The Elastic Hours, have the same mixture of abstract and evocative, and offer a humorous tone that plays nicely off the serious Tsvetaeva songs. A very worthwhile hour of contemporary music for traditional instruments.
Fanfare Magazine
By Huntley Dent
Listening to these four chamber works by the noted California composer Mark Abel, I enjoyed unraveling his elusive imagination. His idiom, although freely tonal, involves some ingredients that seem cryptic at first. For him, musical ideas, however appealing they might be, are transient, and fruitful themes are briefly stated before being discarded or running out of energy (his terms). Something is always happening in these works but not aiming towards a destination or even wanting one—“introversion will get the final word,” as Abel says of “The Unfolding,” the first movement of his Clarinet Trio. He is a composer, one senses, who is always standing aside and observing himself create.
There are three purely instrumental works on the program, each essentially gentle at heart and ruminative in spirit. The clarinet is the protagonist in the one-movement Intuition’s Dance, whose swaggering opening gives the false impression that we are off to a high-spirited modern jig, but introversion breaks the momentum, and the clarinet’s partner, the piano, has ideas of its own. The result, like Ravel’s La valse, is to use dance as the background for psychology. In Ravel’s case it is the psychology of late-Romantic dissolution. In Abel’s piece it is the restless operation of intuition, which keeps turning back on itself to find fresh ways of saying things. His intuition darts from gesture to gesture very quickly, and the piece is finely balanced between letting seed ideas grow and stepping over them to get to the next snatch of rhythm and melody.
The same procedure, with different instruments, imbues the two other purely instrumental works. The Elastic Hours is a duo for violin and piano whose two movements, “What Friday Brought” and “Saturday’s Circumference,” are deceptively simple if we think that Abel is going to make Friday demanding and hustling while Saturday is relaxed and reposeful. He has set out instead, much like Wallace Stevens, to catch the movement of thought itself and wrap it in art, or as Abel puts it, “the subconscious mind’s journey through the course of a day.” The two instruments play evanescent games with fleeting musical gestures that flicker as capriciously as the mind seems to. The two instruments sometimes coalesce, sharing the same sprightly musical idea, but mainly they stay busy with their own train of self-absorption.
The Clarinet Trio by its title is abstract music in a genre that Abel has loved since a child listening to Brahms’s late op. 114 Trio, but in reality the same psychological activity is present in three movements titled “The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight,” and “In Good Time.” The previous works were duos, but with three voices to deal with, we get a more complex intermingling. This, however, doesn’t alter the essential ambiguous motion that Abel loves to explore. An astute writer, he describes the result better than I could: “… at times achieving forward motion and wandering into thickets of musing, [it is] as if the three players represent aspects of personality losing the thread of what holds them together.” Some artists are plagued by the ambiguity that impels them. I feel that way about Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, wishing that it would just say something.
If Abel’s chamber music risks having the same nebulous impact, his vocal music, in sharp contrast, is rooted in emotional intensity and extremes of expression. He is acutely attuned to women in moods of suffering and mystical transport. That thread is picked up here in Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. The poet is considered an eminent Modernist voice in Russia but is almost unknown in the West, and Abel’s piece is a passionate advocacy for Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), whose brief, torturous, and eventually tragic life reflected the travails of Soviet Russia as movingly as her more famous contemporaries, Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova.
As a young woman Tsvetaeva lived through the October Revolution in 1917 and the hunger that followed, losing a daughter to starvation even after her mother, out of desperation, placed her in a Moscow orphanage. Years of impoverished exile followed in Paris, Berlin, and Prague. When Tsvetaeva returned to Russia in 1941, her husband was arrested and executed on charges of espionage, and she subsequently committed suicide. The four short poems that Abel has eloquently set for soprano, English horn, and piano are highly emotional but at the same time obscure. Abel has a bent for oracular and mythic themes, so he resonates with the first poem “Sibyl,” which is about a decaying tree that is actually the grave of an oracle who is granted new life by God, only briefly, before she vanishes into the stars.
Here, I feel, Abel is at his strongest, most original, and intensely personal. A longtime collaborator, soprano Hila Plitmann, uses her agile voice with unfailing courage to undertake Abel’s extreme vocal demands, often going into a very high tessitura as well as anguished shouting. The least obscure poem is “Oh sorrow floods my eyes,” a protest against totalitarianism, whether Nazi or Soviet, that ends in a defiant cry of “No!” As difficult as it is, we are told, to translate Tsvetaeva’s allusive Russian into English, it is not hard to see why she is considered a genius as well as a witness to terrible times. Abel’s complex, dense writing does full justice to this mixture of beauty, prophetic insight, and terror.
Like John Harbison, Abel represents the best strain in contemporary American composers who can merge their musical gifts with a sensitive, far-reaching intellect. He brings up to date the strain of literary delving found in Schumann and Debussy. I’ll concede that this is what I most value here, but the instrumental works also update Debussy’s love of ambiguity as a viable method of creative expression. As the headnote indicates, the performers include acclaimed musicians on the order of Carol Rosenberger, David Shifrin and Fred Sherry, described by Abel as pillars of American music-making. But the newer names represent the same high level of skill, commitment, and artistry. Abel is grateful to them, and he is right to be. The performances are impeccable.
Altogether, this release is the latest installment in Abel’s ongoing musical and autobiographical journal. It is a thoroughly rewarding listen that also manages to be moving and thought-provoking, too.
ConcertoNet
By Christie Grimstad
Mark Abel is a moving target … his mind having a boatload of ideas. Taking in life as a journalist, a rock band composer and producer has given him exposure to a myriad of concepts. It wasn’t until 2012 when “The Dream Gallery,” a seven-movement cycle, was released that pianist (and Delos label director) Carol Rosenberger perked up her ears, finding something uniquely absorbing. Now comes Delos’ fifth Abel release, "The Cave of Wondrous Voice," which jumps back to chamber music, and in a certain way, pays homage to Abel's father, an admirer of the genre.
Borrowing its title from Marina Tsvetaeva’s The Sybil, the CD is a wonderment of powerful words and musical footprints that has a ubiquitous outreach. Merely reading the poetic text by the Russian is emotionally absorbing. While merely flatlined at times (and most certainly in “O sorrow floods my eyes!”), Tsvetaeva takes ever-so-small steps of abrogation, repealing hurt and replacing it with slivers of hope. Abel’s lines require an extremely high tessitura, music that's well-suited for Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann. In a propulsion of unsettledness and like a mighty javelin, her voice pierces the heart: remarkable candor and starkness. Sybil, the proverbial soothsayer, has the power to retract and regain. Mlle. Plitmann cuts into our soul with a timbre that’s omniscient and omnipresent. What a scope!
If a comical interlude “tickles your toes,” then the opening Intuition’s Dance is the one to visit. This spiky dialogue between Rosenberger and David Shifrin’s clarinet dances on a whim and a fancy, caked with options by two strong-headed characters. The piece is bubbly.
Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker uses some of the most inventive violin techniques to build her ideas inside The Elastic Hours. Her notes are sharply poised and, occasionally, ambiguous in thought. Focusing on two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, they abound in universality. Friday’s the end of a long work week (“What Friday Brought”) … too much; Saturday (“Saturday Circumference”) simply moves along with a “kick back and relax” mentality ... but does it, really? Dominic Cheli’s piano introspections have a broader narration on the weekend. The musical episodes aren’t imagined as “anticipating”; rather, they’re randomized events and nonrecurring, having unique meaning to each and every one of us. The spat with a nightmarish tumult must be stifled by a shift into some placid moments by Cheli. Saturday should be a respite, but, maybe anxiety has already set in, thinking ahead about the coming week. Can't we all relate?
Due to paternal persuasions, Abel’s affinity toward Brahms’s Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, made an indelible impression. Inside the composer’s own Clarinet Trio, the tripartite consortium has more introspection and a deeper grain … . Fred Sherry slices away at the dense matter of resolve, as if in a perfecting array. Tempering the tensions, Carol Rosenberger is never far away from the freedom to advance her own “opinion” about the piece. Patience upon “The Unfolding” unveils, retracts, unveils, then, more broadly-speaking, channels a more poignant conversation. To that extent, Sherry has the last draw to the movement. The ensuing “In Good Time” is drenched in a large cloth of sobriety … steep and dank. The cello gives a flickering "pat on the back" to Ralph Vaughan Williams while col legno battuto is exercised (4’05) to anxious effect. As if to close out the piece in a ray of sunshine, the performers resort to placidity (5’23) in a quasi-Copland ode to The Tender Land.
Mark Abel’s new album is an invigorating trek. When all is said and done, "The Cave of Wondrous Voice" speaks to every individual. After all, life is one big circumference … it keeps on repeating itself. Beguiling.
The Whole Note
By Tiina Kiik
California-based composer Mark Abel explains in the liner notes that his father was a “devotee” of such classical chamber music composers as Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven and Dvořák, which clearly influenced his emotionally driven compositions grounded in modern and classical styles.
Abel is renowned for his vocal works. His exciting song cycle Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva features four Russian poems translated to English for the first time by Alyssa Dinega Gilliespie. Soprano Hila Plitmann sings with dramatic clarity, musicality, tuning and high pitches. Carol Rosenberger (piano) and Sarah Beck (English horn) support with technical/musical control as the words and music are one.
Diverse tonal and stylistic storytelling is featured in Abel’s chamber works. Intuition’s Dance features Rosenberger and clarinetist David Shifrin playing contrasting happy bouncy faster, and slower spooky lyrical sections. Cellist Fred Sherry joins them in the three-movement Clarinet Trio in which they each are almost soloists, especially in Taking Flight, with its energetic pulsing opening, and upbeat jazz-flavoured closing.
Another wordless musical story suggesting “the subconscious mind’s journey through the course of the day” is The Elastic Hours, performed by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli. What Friday Brought opens with a positive end-of-the-work-week mood until stuff happens with moody tremolos, and held notes. Saturday’s Circumference is a driving tonal duet featuring intermittent happy toe-tapping and slower reflective sections.
Abel is a compositional master of intriguing contemporary music.
The Journal of Singing
Kathleen Roland-Silverstein on Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva
The songs of two of the composers featured in this month’s column are already known to singers, pianists, and voice teachers through past reviews in this column. Lori Laitman and Mark Abel are prolific art song creators, each with an ear for superb poetry and a gift for envisioning settings of those poems for specific voices.
Mark Abel has written for the unique voice of noted contemporary soprano Hila Plitmann before, notably in The Palm Trees are Restless (2016) and Those Who Loved Medusa (2017). His song cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness won Honorable Mention in the NATS Art Song Competition in 2018. Abel’s color palette of rock, classical and jazz influences, and his impressive sensitivity to vocal color and capability, make these newest songs especially attractive options for a flexible, high tessitura soprano ... .
Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s texts, translated into English and used here for the first time in art song (another notable composer who has set her poetry in the original Russian was Dmitri Shostakovich), conjure up vivid images from the many sources that inspired her, including mythology, political upheaval and her own personal experiences.
The texts have fueled vivid musical settings in this cycle, reflecting the composer’s continuing engagement with sometimes less well known, even obscure, poetry. The composer mellifluously intertwines the high soprano voice, and piano texture ranging from dense to spare, with the unique inclusion of English horn (or Bb clarinet) as the third instrument. The piano score alternates between jagged harmonies with large leaps, and arpeggiated, warm tonal colors. The reedy, warm quality of the English horn evokes distinct textual pairings, from the ancient instrumental sound in the first song about the Greek oracle, The Sibyl, to the plaintive lament of O Sorrow Floods My Eyes. The music is challenging, with frequent leaps and tempo changes for all members of the ensemble, although there is a real sense of unified purpose in each song. The vocal line is frequently but unobtrusively doubled by the piano or the English horn.
Copyright © 2020
National Association of Teachers of Singing
Pizzicato Magazine
By Uwe Krusch
(English translation by Lindsay Koob)
The premiere recordings of American composer Mark Abel's chamber works in the album "The
Cave of Wondrous Voice" once again show him to be someone who, in his youth, eagerly
absorbed the great classical- and romantic-era musical traditions, but who now updates those
styles with more contemporary ideas and idioms.
The opening work, Intuition’s Dance for clarinet and piano, begins with a rigorous
development, which then breaks off and explores new paths without reaching a final
conclusion. Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva constitutes a homage to the Russian poet, setting
to music for the first time in English translation verses whose multilayered levels can hardly be
verbally expressed. The Elastic Hours is, in effect, a two-movement violin sonata in disguise, in
which developments and sudden breaks—especially on subconscious levels— illustrate the very
different courses of consecutive weekdays … . The lovely Clarinet Trio completes the recording.
Brahms' great Op. 114 clarinet trio (as well as the original Russian language settings of the Tsvetaeva
poems) served Abel more as stimulation and inspiration rather than a burden.
The composer was able to enlist truly outstanding artists from among his circle of accomplished
friends to bring his creations to vibrant musical life. Their devotion to the music at hand is
heard in their collective ability to shape and sustain their interpretations. Clarinetist David
Shifrin and soprano Hila Plitmann may be the best-known artists on the recording. Shifrin's
sensitive approach and Plitmann's distinctive vocal expressiveness are the cornerstones of this
collection. But in The Elastic Hours, violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker knows how to generate
appeal with her resonant tones. The keyboard talents of pianists Carol Rosenberger and
Dominic Cheli add spice to the music.
Considering Mark Abel's heretofore vocally dominant oeuvre, the chamber compositions heard
here present expressive possibilities well worth hearing.
Hollywood Soapbox.com
By John Soltes
Mark Abel recently released a new album of chamber music called The Cave of Wondrous Voice, featuring four pieces — “Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva,” “Clarinet Trio,” “Intuition’s Dance” and “The Elastic Hours.” The effort serves as a quality example of Abel’s recent fascination and mastery of the chamber art form.
The recording has been in the works for quite some time — long before the coronavirus hit. Now, when the music world has been ordered to stay home and think of unique ways to share their art, Abel has moved ahead with the album’s release, with the hope that quarantined listeners are yearning for something unique to enjoy.
“As is often the case with composers, some of the pieces recorded are discrete projects, others of them are the best stuff that you produced recently, and you just want to get it out there,” Abel said in a phone interview. “But I think the main thrust behind this release is the fact that it’s the first chamber music that has come out under my name. I’ve done five albums for Delos, and all of the previous stuff has been vocal music, ranging from opera to orchestral song cycles to solo songs to various other permutations.
“Vocal music is something I have a kind of built-in affinity for, and [I] was once a rock musician many, many years ago. But chamber music has always been a tough nut for me to crack, and some inner blocks that I’ve had about it finally dissolved, magically. I can’t even explain why, [but] about three years ago I started writing chamber pieces and eventually felt that I had three viable ones. And I found some terrific people who wanted to record them.”
Those terrific people who helped him along the way are clarinetist David Shifrin, cellist Fred Sherry and pianist Carol Rosenberger. He also was aided by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker, pianist Dominic Cheli and hornist Sarah Beck.
“The earliest of these chamber pieces is a clarinet trio. That’s a combination of instruments that hasn’t been exploited as much as you would expect considering what a wonderful combination it is,” he said. “The piece that means the most to pretty much everybody in that sphere is the Brahms clarinet trio, which I’ve known since I was a kid. I definitely felt it was a challenge to write something using the tools he had at his disposal.”
The challenge was overcome when something “clicked” in Abel’s brain. He doesn’t know what was preventing him from composing effective chamber music before, but he jumped over any hurdles and began to work in earnest on his clarinet trio. “I was able to turn out what I think is a credible piece,” he said. “That boosted my spirits to the point where I have since written a violin piece, “The Elastic Hours,” and a duo that David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger play called “Intuition’s Dance.”
The fascination with chamber music has not stopped since the album’s release. He is currently working on a cello sonata that he hopes to record in the future.
Abel has been working with Delos since 2012, when he first made the connection with Rosenberger. They have become good friends over the years. “She had a very long and successful recording career herself, and played on two pieces on my previous album,” he said. “She hadn’t recorded for about 15 years, but she likes my music a lot.
“David Shifrin I have known as a recording artist for a long time, and I’ve seen him play live a few times. I finally got a chance to meet him a couple of years ago. When I showed him the clarinet trio, he said he wanted to perform it at his chamber music festival in Portland, Chamber Music Northwest -- a heaven-sent development for me. So he, Fred Sherry and another pianist premiered it in 2018, and we recorded it last fall.”
Composing and playing chamber music, with its relatively small number of instruments, has presented Abel with a welcome challenge, which at this point in his career he is more than ready to oblige. He has already found success with his vocal collaborations with Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann, and has set poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetaeva, Pablo Neruda and California poets Kate Gale and Joanne Regenhardt. His résumé also boasts many years as a journalist and a few as a rock musician.
“I’ve been writing vocal music for so long that I have a fair amount of fluidity with it,” he said. “It’s been the repository of the most interesting musical ideas that I’ve had up to this point, but (with) chamber music, organic flow is what makes it successful (or not). It was very frustrating because I feel I achieved the flow aspect in my vocal music, but something was not letting me let go and find the kind of freedom I don’t have any trouble accessing when I’m writing vocal music. … My early unsuccessful attempts at chamber writing were stiff-sounding and too calculated. They didn’t have the illusion of spontaneity that you must write into the music.”
Now that stiffness and calculation are long gone, and Abel has entered the cave of wondrous voice.
Fanfare Magazine
By Raymond Tuttle
In reviewing another composer’s work, I recently got myself in Dutch by hearing jazz influences in the music that apparently were not there. This time around, the shoe is on the other foot. Composer Mark Abel’s website says that his hybridized style melds classical music and rock. ... That might be true of other works that he has composed, but I don’t hear any of that here. To me, this is straight-ahead classical music, albeit not easy to describe in terms of possible stylistic influences, although on his website he cites many composers who have inspired him. His website also mentions his “strong gift for melody,” which implies something different to me than what it seems to mean here. None of this is meant negatively; it just goes to show that no two people hearing the same piece of music are going to hear precisely the same things.
Mark Abel spent his younger years in the rock world—playing guitar and bass, writing songs, producing records, and working with legends such as Tom Verlaine and The Feelies. In the 1980s, he moved into journalism, and in recent years he has focused on composing—he is self-taught, by the way—and there have been several releases on the Delos label prior to this one. It goes by the name "The Cave of Wondrous Voice," and where it differs from its predecessors is in the emphasis on non-vocal chamber music, with the exception of Four Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, for soprano, English horn, and piano. ... The cycle is billed as the first-ever setting of Tsvetaeva’s poetry in English translations. This helps us to appreciate the moment-to-moment sensitivity of Abel’s responses to the texts. Indeed, some of the writing is melodic, in the sense of “tuneful,” but Abel seems more interested in reflecting the ever-shifting moods of the texts than in providing an undemanding ear-bath for the listener. Soprano Hila Plitmann keeps up with Abel’s challenging writing, and then some ... .
... In Intuition’s Dance, for clarinet and piano, the two musicians are equal partners. The forthright first section finds them in a cooperative mood, but in the middle of the work they seem to experience a crisis of confidence; several times the piano tries to get the clarinet to respond, and finally, in the last section of the work, it succeeds. David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger, both veteran performers, glide through the music’s changeability without batting an eyelash. The Elastic Hours, for violin and piano, is in two movements: “What Friday Brought” and “Saturday’s Circumference.” Here too, the music has a “this ... this ... and now that” sensibility that suggests a story being told or a diary being written. This is a good workout for the two young performers, Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and Dominic Cheli. The Clarinet Trio (clarinet, cello, and piano) is in three movements (“The Unfolding,” “Taking Flight,” and “In Good Time”), and was inspired, at least partly, by Abel’s childhood recollections of hearing Brahms’s trio for this same combination of instruments. Again, in the first movement there is the idea that the three instruments have human personalities, including human impatience. Cellist Fred Sherry, now in his 70s, nevertheless adds his own youthful suppleness to the contributions of Shifrin and Rosenberger.
The music—all of Abel’s music that I have heard—seems driven more by impulses and intuition than by academic concerns for form and development. However, given the relatively short length of these works, that is not much of a fault, if it is even a fault at all.
Praise for "Time and Distance"
Second Inversion/KING-FM, Seattle
By Dacia Clay
Please follow the link here for a podcast interview about Time and Distance
San Francisco Classical Voice
By Lou Fancher
Please follow the link here for a combined analysis and interview on Time and Distance.
Voix des Arts
By Joseph Newsome
Please follow the link here for a long-form analysis of Time and Distance
Gramophone
By Laurence Vittes
Mark Abel’s fourth CD on Delos is rich in those moments of inspiration when a composer first comes under the spell of poetry. His marriages of subtly charged music with an eclectic modernist twist to emotionally provocative, introspective texts work best in Those Who Loved Medusa, set to Kate Gale’s haunting poem, in which Hila Plitmann gloriously evokes Medusa deep in a lover’s night: "Turn me into that thing you fear. Make me monster … wet, ripe, swollen." While Delos founding director Carol Rosenberger, returning to the recording studios for the first time in recent years, infuses the involving piano part with characteristic chaste beauty, percussionist Bruce Carver adds whisks and whips of colour to the feminist drama.
Also notable is In the Rear-View Mirror, Now, a nod to vintage Hollywood set to the composer’s own poems, with Tali Tadmor taking over at the piano and Abel adding ambience and a unique lyrical line at the organ. The second in the cycle, "The World Clock," is a bittersweet, politically tinged paean to San Francisco before it was taken over by Silicon Valley millionaires. The third, "The Nature of Friendship," includes tips of the hat to Barbra Streisand’s old Broadway hit "People" and a snatch from Berg’s Lulu.
Abel heads in another direction with The Ocean of Forgiveness, exploring intimate poems of love, desolation and reconciliation by Joanne Regenhardt in quiet, moving ways. ... Recorded at The Bridge studios in Glendale, California, the sound is always natural and gorgeous.
The Journal of Singing
By Gregory Berg
Mark Abel is one of our most accomplished art song composers, with an impressive body of work that grows by the day. One hallmark of his legacy is his artistic adventurousness; he is a composer with bold and ambitious ideas and the resourcefulness to nearly always bring those ideas to full and effective fruition. His latest collection is a hallmark to his restless imagination and bold inventiveness and marks a new level of excellence we have not seen before.
The standout among these compelling works has to be “Those Who Loved Medusa,” a captivating setting of a remarkable text by Kate Gale, a friend of and frequent collaborator with the composer. Her text describes Medusa as the tragic victim of rape at the hands of Poseidon; her terrible ordeal is compounded when Poseidon’s jealous wife Athena unjustly blames Medusa for the assault and unleashes the curse that transforms Medusa into the monstrous creature that turns to stone any man who catches even a glimpse of her hideous features. It is a tale of operatic intensity and Abel responds with a setting that is shattering and haunting. The piece combines solo soprano and piano with an array of percussion instruments that give the work a sense of otherworldly mystery. One of Abel’s daring choices is to craft a vocal line that is cruelly stratospheric, undoubtedly to help convey Medusa’s anger and anguish. It is a tribute to the composer’s careful craftsmanship as well as soprano Hila Plitmann’s skillful singing that the text can be understood, and the sound never veers into stridency. It is a remarkable achievement. Carol Rosenberger is at the piano and contributes mightily to this work’s impact, as does percussionist Bruce Carver.
The disk opens with “The Invocation,” which features a touching text by the composer himself that reflects on life’s uncertainties and difficulties. It reads in part:
We are tempted, we succumb,
sometimes dangle from the bottom rung.
All the while echoing the saddest songs we’ve sung.
If this text is any indication, Abel is as capable a poet as he is a composer. The words work beautifully on their own, but they also cry out for music to give them flight. Abel responds with a setting that is sensitive and evocative. The disk ends with another of Abel’s own texts, “The Benediction,” which reads as an unsettling twist on Katharine Lee Bates’ “America, the Beautiful.” In Abel’s poem, the line “from sea to shining sea” is interspersed with unsettling images of empty malls, thinning small towns, and a young man harboring angry resentment as he cleans his gun in contemplation of a violent act. Abel is painting a vivid portrait of a modern America grappling with discontent and uncertainty. Fortunately for us, Abel finishes his text on a radiant note of hope:
Far New England, autumn time.
A child stares at red leaves
and wonders how a miracle is made.
She will grow and she will know before long
the path of grace, the changing face of our age
-- ever shifting, elusive, turned toward the future.
Of this she is sure: Yesterday is gone
and open hearts must point the way.
And with her go the hopes of all,
from sea to shining sea.
Abel’s texts are also featured in the three songs that comprise “In the Rear View Mirror, Now.” This particular song cycle is laden with discouragement and disillusionment, and one finds scarcely a hint of hope within it. The songs are perched in the same relentlessly high tessitura as the aforementioned “Those Who Loved Medusa,” but what worked so effectively there feels a bit ill-fitting here. Nevertheless, one cannot argue with Hila Plitmann’s skillful and expressive singing or with Abel’s gift for conveying unvarnished emotional truth, however unpleasant it sometimes needs to be. Far lovelier is “The Ocean of Forgiveness,” a cycle of five songs with exquisite texts by Joanne Regenhardt. This is the most consistently beautiful and atmospheric music on the disk, and these songs allow mezzo soprano Janelle DeStefano to demonstrate the full radiance and grace of her singing. Pianist Tali Tadmor is kept very busy by Abel’s complex and highly expressive accompaniments but dispatches them with dazzling ease.
Abel was a professional journalist for more than two decades, and clearly his work as a composer is richly informed by his keen interest in societal issues and concerns well beyond the arena of music making. One can also glean from his extensive and thorough program notes what a thoughtful composer he is. Nothing he writes is accidental or arbitrary; he is a meticulous craftsman who obviously cares deeply about the songs he writes and shares with the world. May there be many more to come.
Opera News
By Arlo McKinnon
[Abel’s] style is an eclectic mix of rock and classical elements. Time and Distance, the fourth release by Delos Records of his vocal music, consists of classical art songs — some of them standalone works, others complete song cycles. The album feels unified; you could imagine its being performed in concert in its entirety.
The majority of the songs feature texts by Abel; “Those Who Loved Medusa” sets a poem by contemporary poet Kate Gale, and the song cycle “The Ocean of Forgiveness” sets five poems by Joanne Regenhardt. The texts concern everything from discovery to suicide, broken love to our current political reality. There are many pop-culture references, particularly in the texts by Abel.
The vocal lines are dramatic and through-composed, faithful to the texts, but they tend to dwell in the highest tessitura … . Hila Plitmann is quite the coloratura acrobat … (while) mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano handles the higher reaches of her performances with evident vocal mastery.
Abel’s vocal writing defaults to the altissimo register. This is most effective in “Those Who Loved Medusa,” the extended song that expresses Medusa’s rage at Poseidon for raping her, as well as her bitterness that it was she, not he, who was punished by Athena … .
There are many beautiful moments throughout the disc. The opening and closing songs, “The Invocation” and “The Benediction,” have much to offer, as does “Those Who Loved Medusa.” Abel varies the overall moods of the different songs, so they’re never too predictable.
CultureSpot LA
By Theodore Bell
Composer Mark Abel's Delos CD release Time and Distance (DE 3550) features acclaimed Los Angeles area vocalists soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano. Their task was immense in this endeavor — to mediate operatic texts by Abel and area poets Joanne Regenhardt and Kate Gale that address difficult social, psychological and political issues. The collection has a unique LA sound and attitude that makes it a fine example of the creativity and currency of the local chamber music scene. Abel’s settings fuse chamber and contemporary styles seamlessly together to achieve a spacious feel with only a small ensemble. Ethereal swaths of sound contrast with minimalist passages to support flowing lyrical vocal lines. There is just enough complexity to pique the mind and attune the ear to it without overpowering the verse. In addition to Abel on organ, the ensembles include pianists Tali Tadmor and Carol Rosenberger and percussionist Bruce Carver.
Plitmann brings her exceptional talent to three works, the first of which, “Those Who Loved Medusa,” links the modern #MeToo movement and the legend of Medusa through text inspired by Los Angeles poet Kate Gale. Carver opens the piece with shimmering crotale tones to set an ancient context before the music emotes to Plitmann’s dramatic account of Medusa’s rape by Poseidon. Her voice is unsettling as she conjures the fear in the victims, who are then intimidated by deeply embedded social fears inspired by historical misogyny and abuse of women. Lines like “Carry this story forward. Rape is the fault of the victim” taunt the casual listener. Athena’s rage and her misdirected blame is palpable in the rhythmic intensity that climactically finishes with Medusa’s monstrous transformation. A plaintive Medusa attempts to move on from the crime and accept her new identity. Her agitation dissipates with the help of a magical instrument known as the rainstick, and she ended with a gentle portrayal of those who sought Medusa in exile.
Plitmann again presents an affective portrayal of lingering dissonance with three songs comprising “In the Rear View Mirror Now,” only this time from the personal perspective of one’s past. The music is upbeat and sonorous and beautifully expresses her second-guessing and bittersweet memories. Tadmor and Abel meld piano and organ to create accompaniment to Plitmann’s emotive vocals. A piano figure is counterbalanced against deep bass tones from Abel’s organ, the two interacting in a seemingly perpetual motion.
“The Long Goodbye” depicts a love relationship that degenerates slowly over time, damaged by a lack of commitment. The music and text oscillate between resignation and resolve as Plitmann sings with a wonderful sensitivity and tenderness. “The World Clock” reflects on the technology boom in San Francisco as a cause of the city losing its most distinctive characteristics — its minorities, artists and intellectuals. Abel’s music deftly supports his own sentiments — dismay over the loss of the heart of the city, and as the song ends, we return to Los Angeles. The cycle’s finale, “The Nature of Friendship,” explores human attachment. Pedal-tones from the organ grind in clashing semitones to accompany Plitmann’s exposition with an illusory reference to Barbra Streisand’s “People.” Her lament over lost friends and societal troubles is moving.
Not all is bleak, however. Plitmann returns on the final track of the collection for “The Benediction,” to sing a final lamentation that resolves into a dreamy glimmer of hope for future generations. The contemporary subject is the loss of America’s natural beauty through our ineffective stewardship.
DeStefano is equally evocative with her singing of “The Invocation,” which serves as the introduction to the disc and effectively sets the overall tone. She has a rich, warm and nuanced voice that provides subtle affective interpretations of Abel’s text. Immediately, Rosenberger’s nimble piano propels the listener vicariously down life’s path, followed by a poetic retrospection realizing the dangerous seductions and close calls that one must unknowingly brush in the course of living one’s life.
“The Ocean of Forgiveness” is based on five poems of Joanne Regenhardt that appear in the collection “Soundings.” DeStefano is elegant in her depiction of “Desert Wind,” and a feeling of tender remembrance manages to shine through in “Sally’s Suicide.” “In Love With the Sky” finds her expressing many shifting, fleeting moods; she is impressively versatile in her expression, and Tadmor’s touch was gentle and persuasive as well.
Bravo! A very creative collection of song with extraordinary singers and timely topics.
Fanfare Magazine
By Huntley Dent
As a former journalist who rose to the position of foreign editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, composer Mark Abel has a strong stake in his own words, and he writes striking, often stark lyrics. In his 2012 song cycle The Dream Gallery, a character named Carol begins her song with the lines, “My husband is a killer. / Not the kind with an axe or a gun, / but a piranha in the asphalt sea.” These gritty, socially conscious texts feel like a crossover from Abel’s former profession.
Composing art songs in this country rarely leads to a major career, but Delos has been steadfast in believing in Abel’s talent, and this new release is its fourth with him. The texts are largely by him, but one poem, “Those Who Loved Medusa,” is by Los Angeles poet Kate Gale, and “The Ocean of Forgiveness” is a cycle based on five poems by La Jolla poet Joanne Regenhardt, a former opera singer. Unlike The Dream Gallery, where varied musical idioms, including rock and jazz, are orchestrated in depth to bring out the seven characters who stand in for seven California cities, here the musical language is often spare, and the accompaniments are either piano only, piano with organ (played by the composer), or piano and percussion.
When he depicted those California cities, Abel didn’t aim at pictorial effects but instead chose a single character caught in a dramatic situation reflective of each locale. This new collection, under the abstract title of Time and Distance, is at once similar and dissimilar. There’s still reportage about current issues (sexual abuse of women, the invasion and takeover of San Francisco by techies), but there’s a strong tendency to reflect, look over one’s shoulder, and ask what might have been. Disillusionment is a core theme, along with the ambiguity of “byways and detours” that interrupt life’s journey, keeping it from fulfilling the things people thought they’d achieve.
Abel, born in 1948, is an intelligent commentator on his own music, and his extensive program notes help us navigate it. But as a listening experience, Time and Distance is direct rather than elusive. Musically Abel wants to elicit new facets of art song, drawing, I’d say, on two Modernist strains: The emotional ambivalence and subtle glints in Hugo Wolf and the Expressionist angst and sorrow of Schoenberg—not that his music sounds like either. Wolf can be a distanced composer of fleeting phrases that vanish before they resolve; Schoenberg can be intense to the point of lurid melodrama. I hear Abel’s songs trying to come to terms with these opposing forces.
He describes the first song, “The Invocation,” scored for mezzo-soprano and piano, as an introduction to the entire program, with its “we” instead of “I” casting a wide gaze and its theme of emotional ambiguity. The idiom is spare to the point that the piano part might dwindle to a single unharmonized line, the tapping out of an arpeggio or a motto of associated notes. Mezzo Janelle DeStefano has a warm, appealing voice, but she isn’t allowed to settle on a comforting emotion; the piano part, expressively played by Carol Rosenberger, is like a voice from another room. The two lines pay attention to each other without escaping their separate viewpoints. It’s an intriguing way to structure a song of private self-reflection that ends on a wistful question: “Why must happiness be earned?”
The wide vocal leaps that characterize Schoenberg’s songs are adopted by Abel for similar reasons: to depict disquiet, anxiety, a lack of resolution and existential loss. The second song, “Those Who Loved Medusa,” adheres to this tactic in the vocal line, but the mythic richness of the past is depicted in exotic percussion (gong, rainstick, crotale). Medusa narrates her own grim story of rape by Poseidon, Athena’s curse that turned her into a monster, and the seductive power she continues to have over men. Gale is perhaps overly explicit in announcing that her poem is about women’s “culpability” in rape, but the link to “#MeToo” is apposite and powerful. Soprano Hila Plitmann impressively negotiates the song’s wide, generally atonal leaps.
The theme of a vanished world is central to the program’s first song cycle, “In the Rear View Mirror, Now,” where Abel’s text is a darkly glittering kaleidoscope of pop references (Raymond Chandler, Barbra Streisand, iPhones), the hallucinatory San Francisco in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and hints of Berg’s Lulu. Plitmann is soloist, expertly delivering a vocal line that’s often more melodic than before, although not always. Abel’s gloomy organ part might be nostalgic for the Fillmore as he laments lost friends who drifted away for reasons “bland and evasive”— one hears a middle-aged accusation that ends on a note of sharp bitterness: “Don’t kid yourself. / They’d have kicked you off the Titanic’s lifeboat / if it came to that.”
By this point you’ll have gathered that Abel is standing in as a contemporary Jeremiah, and some listeners won’t respond to constant lamentation. But then, some listeners don’t respond to Wolf, Berg and Schoenberg, either. Abel, being just as serious about art song as those great predecessors, demands that the listener adapt to his music, not the other way around. The “pessimism and emptiness” of the “Rear View Mirror” songs need alleviation, which comes in the five Regenhardt settings, where the beauty of desert and sky enters, along with human virtues: patience, compassion, empathy and lasting union in relationships. Abel isn’t conceding completely to those things; there’s a song, “Sally’s Suicide,” to maintain the theme of loss. Ironically, it draws from him a rich, almost operatic piano part, and the singer, DeStefano this time, adds a welcome layer of feminine warmth to the cycle.
The last song, ironically titled “The Benediction,” is Abel’s commentary on the “frightening fissures” in our current cultural divide. In a panorama from the Pacific Coast Highway to the Deep South, Midwestern heartland and New England, each verse calls up a different rhythm and mood in the piano part, with Plitmann’s high vocals floating above. I’d call this ambitious song Abel’s nod to Charles Ives, a composer who merged Americana, Emersonian vision, and avant-garde musical gestures. “The Benediction” is in keeping with the program’s pessimistic theme, but it becomes gentler and more hopeful at the end, portraying a young girl in New England who stands for a better, more open-minded future.
I can recommend any lover of art songs to have a go at this challenging but heartfelt recording, which I’ve tried to describe objectively in order to indicate Abel’s sincerity and integrity, both as writer and composer. The full effect, as always, cannot be grasped without hearing the songs, and the excellence of all the singers and instrumentalists is a considerable asset. I’ll underscore that few current songwriters rival Abel’s intriguing texts and their reach into so many psychological and cultural issues. Meaning and melody go hand in hand in a very contemporary way, which I truly admire.
Pizzicato Magazine
By Norbert Tischer
Composer Mark Abel—who has in the past devoted himself to rock music, then journalism—has since become one of the most interesting figures in American contemporary music.
This album presents him as a composer of art songs. The songs grew either out of his own texts, or also—as in the cycle “The Ocean of Forgiveness”—poetry by Joanne Regenhardt. All of the texts deal with actual societal issues (as in the song “The Benediction,” about a torn, divided America), though a few go as far back as Greek mythology. Abel succeeds in clothing such strong texts in equally strong, emotion-laden music.
The accompaniments employ piano for the most part, though a few songs are further enhanced by percussion and organ. And much is done in such accompaniments to create atmospherically descriptive frameworks to the singing.
Soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano perform Abel’s music with bravura and much feeling, sensitively supported by Carol Rosenberger at the piano.
Classical-Modern Music Review
By Grego Applegate Edwards
As I have lived my life and I will admit I have, and not for any short time so far either...I realize that there are certain things that are an acquired taste, that not every human is fated to appreciate, that in many ways go against a prevailing view of what it is to be "cool" or "popular." The contemporary lieder or song is probably such a thing. In the house I reside in I can guarantee that if I put on such a genre of music I will be subjected to commentary of an unappreciative sort. No less than if I were to play an Albert Ayler recording when he was especially energetic in his expressiveness. It has not stopped me from listening nor will it. I might be wrong about some things but in this case I am sure of myself. I am correct! Some people may hate the late string quartets of Beethoven. Well. It is their loss.
So one is rewarded in the exploration of such musical territory with riches at times, sometimes very exceptionally so, times that make it all worthwhile. I speak today of such a thing, namely, composer Mark Abel's new program of songs, Time and Distance (Delos 3550). These are most definitely songs for our time, Modern surely, not outgoingly in the sense that they are not in an avant garde mode so much as they resound with a most thoroughgoing, advanced harmonic-melodic musicality. They say lyrically something for our time as well. Not sentimental, artful yet not self-consciously so. The words are alternately by the composer, Kate Gale and Joanne Regenhardt.
The songs and song cycles, five of them, are set for soprano (Hila Plitmann), mezzo-soprano (Janelle DeStefano), plus piano (Tali Tadmor or Carol Rosenberger) and are joined by percussion (Bruce Carver) on one, organ (the composer) on another. The performances are excellent. Ms. Plitmann to me is especially captivating, but that is not to say Ms. DeStefano is not. She is.
These are songs to grow into. I find them the more sublime the more I listen to this program. There is an endless musicality to them that never grows stale. They are, I believe, milestones in song for today, and to me very beautiful indeed. So I recommend strongly that you hear them.
Fanfare Magazine
By Maria Nockin
Composer Mark Abel’s new disc, Time and Distance, contains the world premieres of two song cycles and three substantial individual works I hope to hear at a live recital in the near future. ... Abel combines tuneful original passages with rock and jazz elements to form unique tonal structures. With a colorful blend of styles, he communicates the nature of each work, often with a powerful emotional punch. Mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano and soprano Hila Plitmann are “crossover” singers who straddle the void between concert, opera, and musical theater. Both sing with the kind of diction that makes it possible to walk across the room or even do a chore and not miss a word of the poetry.
Abel wrote both the music and the lyrics for The Invocation and The Benediction, strong pieces enveloping and anchoring the two song cycles that form the main dishes of Abel’s program. In the opening piece, The Invocation, the mezzo reminds us of the answerless questions posed by modern existence. Life offers us a void that gives no hints on how to achieve happiness during our sojourn here. Must we earn happiness? Carol Rosenberger’s fluent playing is the perfect accompaniment to DeStefano’s rose-velvet tones. In the closer, The Benediction, Abel’s hope for a brighter future lights our land “from sea to shining sea.” The bright, sunny tones of Hila Plitmann and pianist Tali Tadmor bring hope to what would otherwise be contemplation of our era’s many inadequacies.
Plitmann continues with Those Who Loved Medusa, a song that has a text by Los Angeles poet Kate Gale. It speaks to the tragedy of so many young women who have only recently begun to speak out with “Me too” stories of sexual assault. Just as Medusa was found guilty when Poseidon raped her in ancient Greece, we still blame the victim in cases of sexual aggression. Although we think of Medusa as a horrible monster, she was a beautiful girl before Poseidon’s wife, Athena, cursed her and changed the strands of her hair into snakes. Plitmann’s unadorned silvery high notes remind the listener that young girls are a precious, beautiful treasure not to be wasted. Carol Rosenberger accompanies her with virtuosic style and Bruce Carver’s delicate percussion gives the work a feeling of Hellenic antiquity.
In the Rear View Mirror, Now is a cycle of three songs that speak to our modern condition. These days we are apt to listen to a recital, not in the concert hall, but where we so often hear music instead, in the car. First, Plitmann, Tadmor and organist Mark Abel tell of a romance doomed by a clash of personalities. Next, they lament the lost world of North Beach, Chinatown, and the Haight. In the third song they deplore the insubstantial friendships of the modern era and finish with, “They’d have kicked you off the Titanic’s lifeboat if it came to that.” As a journalist for more than two decades, Abel has seen a great deal of the world and he often reflects its grimy underbelly. Here, he shows his mastery of tragedy as composer, musician, and poet.
Abel’s song cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness contains five poems by Joanne Regenhardt that describe the glory of nature and some of the joys and sorrows felt by those who live in it. The titles are: “Desert Wind,” “Sally’s Suicide,” “In Love with the Sky,” “Reunion,” and “Patience.” The final song sums it up best: “We wait until the leaves are gone and every shell washed clean by the ocean of forgiveness.” The poems are part of Regenhardt’s Canadian-published collection Soundings.
I was particularly pleased by DeStefano’s exquisite beauty of tone and her variety of vocal colors as she and Tadmor performed “Patience,” which ends with “Until together we will love the world.” If only we could. What we can do is listen to the music on this well-recorded disc and contemplate both word and tone. This is a recording to keep in the car for meaningful listening.
Opera Lively
By Luiz Gazzola
Opera Lively interviewee Mark Abel has released his fourth CD with Delos. … Those familiar with his (previously reviewed) chamber opera Home Is a Harbor and his excellent song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless will find some old friends here. The poetry of Kate Gale had already been set to music and recorded by soprano Hila Plitmann and pianist Tali Tadmor in Palm Trees, and mezzo Janelle DeStefano sang the double roles of Linda and Lenore in Harbor.
These talented artists are again put to good use. The two singers do very well, with the Grammy-winning Plitmann once again displaying her agility, range, and purity of sound (I particularly loved her in The Benediction), while DeStefano is warm and engaging in the reflexive and melodious The Ocean of Forgiveness.
As far as the poetry goes, I found the present album to be even more interesting than the one I have previously reviewed. We are talking contemporary music, and these lyrics and poems are, well, very contemporary indeed. For example, Kate Gale's poem "Those Who Loved Medusa" talks about the mythical creature's rape by Poseidon, with a jealous Athena being very accusatory: "Rape is the fault of the victim." The song describes how Medusa, before being made into a monster, was simply a woman who was the victim of repeated abuse. The lines are powerful and fit right into recent events.
This theme of the here and now continues with Mark Abel's own strong poetry in the short cycle made up of The Long Goodbye, The World Clock and The Nature of Friendship, which describe the gentrification of San Francisco and the impact of psychotherapy, social media and technology on human relationships, complete with a quotation of Berg's Lulu.
Even more political is the song I liked the best, The Benediction, when again the composer writes his own courageous lyrics, addressing the fractured nature of current American society, all the way to the gun-toting lone wolves who commit mass murder: "Somewhere a young man cleans his gun. 'They have stolen my America,' he cries. Who will draw the poison from his heart? A girl or God, we pray." Abel had already added: "I sense a building tide sweeping across a discontented land that needs renewal."
Despite its somber tone, The Benediction ends on a positive note: "Of this she is sure: yesterday is gone and open hearts must point the way. And with her go the hopes of all, from sea to shining sea." [Reviewer's note: Insert goosebumps here].
This tempers a bit the bitterness of the longer (and very beautiful) song cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness, which sets to music five poems of Joanne Regenhardt that are laden with despair and suicide, echoing the very first song, The Invocation, where Abel also proposes a bleak picture that ends with the line "Why must happiness be earned?"
Musically speaking, low, melancholic Bs and B-flats for the organ, and rumbling, deep percussion add some variety to the usual piano-and-voice art song setup, easing up what I found to be the only shortcoming of this album: some vocal lines along the 57 minutes appear … with a similar and recurring structure of long sustained high notes. I suppose that, besides being a valid style, it has to do with the emotions being colored here, which often evoke a plaintive feeling.
In summary, this is an artsy (in the good sense), intelligent, sensitive, and sophisticated album that encourages deep thinking when it touches a number of contemporary issues, with exquisite lyrics and technically accomplished instrumentalists and singers. It is a very recommended purchase for lovers of contemporary music and poetry.
Beyond Criticism
By Matthew Gurewitsch
"Those Who Loved Medusa," to verse by Kate Gale, recycles Greek mythology for the #MeToo era. Medusa, it seems, had many suitors back in the day but spurned them all, until the god Poseidon came along and raped her in a temple. "You wore red," the goddess Athena scolds after the fact, blaming the victim. "You smiled." Post-Poseidon, her hair now a mass of hissing snakes, the monster Medusa survives to receive lovers in her island cave. "It isn't true," she insists towards the close, "they all died."
Scorching stuff, savagely sounded by the soprano Hila Plitmann, partnered by Carol Rosenberger, piano, and Bruce Carver, now glittering, now thunderous, on percussion.
Fanfare Magazine
By Colin Clarke
Composer Mark Abel is clearly at home writing for the human voice. The musical vocabulary on display here is approachable, mostly easy on the ear and also somewhat timeless. The first piece, The Invocation, sets a text by the composer on life’s ambiguities. At once an acceptance of the human condition and an extended musical question mark, it is given an assured performance by mezzo Janelle DeStefano. The close recording seems to refer more to popular recorded music balances but is nonetheless involving, and the rapport between DeStefano and pianist Carol Rosenberger is clear.
Moving from a portrait of our lot as humans (“It is a trek. We see that now”) to Greek legend, Abel sets a text by Kate Gale, Those Who Loved Medusa. Not his first setting of Gale (see The Palm Trees Are Restless on the Delos disc Home Is a Harbor), this piece adds percussion to the mix, from the crotales of the opening to the ritualistic pounding of a drum in the background. Myths have fierce contemporary relevance, and nowhere more so than here, where the rape of Medusa plugs directly into the “Me too” movement. Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann is a superbly assured interpreter, fiercely focused in the disturbing subject matter. And disturbing it certainly should be.
The text for the extended song cycle In the Rear View Mirror, Now is again furnished by the composer. The addition of an organ (played by the composer) to the voice and piano adds a depth to the sound picture, as well as casting a certain haunting shadow. The three poems are linked by “a shared umbrella of disillusion,” in the composer’s own words. Plitmann’s upper register is tested and comes across with laser-like precision, yet without ever sounding uncomfortable. The second song, “The World Clock,” is a requiem for a city ushered in by an “iPhone World Clock”; but the most powerful song is the final “The Nature of Friendship.” Plitmann’s unerring sense of line enables her to narrate the song most effectively; the text slips in a nice reference to Schigolch in “Lulu’s London garret.”
Ceding the text to former opera singer Joanne Regenhardt, the cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness is a five-song exploration of Nature and its power. The smokier voice of a mezzo (DeStefano) is the perfect choice for this world where simple, unaccompanied vocal gestures can speak volumes. The musical language itself is more complex than in the pieces heard so far; the desolation of “Sally’s Suicide” is palpable, while it is the striking simplicity of “In Love with the Sky” that makes it all the more powerful. Tali Tadmor’s piano playing is particularly striking in this song cycle. The piano has a voice of its own, one might contend, and a strong voice at that. The single piano line that opens “Patience” is an incredibly poignant example.
Finally, there comes The Benediction (text by the composer). It is a cry for “truth and reason” in an uncertain America and holds at its heart a message of hope in young people who, with open hearts, can take us forwards. Plitmann’s performance is searing in its intensity.
This is a most varied collection, therefore, from a composer who clearly finds his best expression through setting texts that resonate with him on a deep level.
Infodad.com
By Mark J. Estren
Abel’s music, which like that of many contemporary composers includes jazz and rock elements, is firmly in the service of the words he chooses to set – by himself, Kate Gale and Joanne Regenhardt. The music ... gains stature in supporting and enhancing the verbiage, which is clearly what matters most to Abel in these songs. … As songs and song cycles exploring issues-of-the-moment, the material is effective.
… Abel uses Those Who Loved Medusa ... to support strictly contemporary views of rape and rapine. The well-considered use of percussion here is the song’s most-effective element. The three-song cycle In the Rear View Mirror, Now, in which Abel himself plays the organ, is about attachments, both personal and to the world, and how they change and disappoint.
Soprano Hila Plitmann handles all the songs with care and emotive skill, but even more striking is mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano’s delivery of the emotionalism of The Ocean of Forgiveness, the cycle on this disc that reaches out most strongly to listeners. This cycle works because, although Regenhardt’s words are partly inspired by specific locales, such as a desert area near San Diego, the words do not insist on topicality or on dealing with straitened concerns of the current sociopolitical environment. Instead, they use highly specific occurrences – as in Sally’s Suicide, the second of the five songs – to try to connect with listeners facing their own turmoil and life difficulties. Abel’s musical support of the words is particularly effective in this cycle … .
By Dacia Clay
Please follow the link here for a podcast interview about Time and Distance
San Francisco Classical Voice
By Lou Fancher
Please follow the link here for a combined analysis and interview on Time and Distance.
Voix des Arts
By Joseph Newsome
Please follow the link here for a long-form analysis of Time and Distance
Gramophone
By Laurence Vittes
Mark Abel’s fourth CD on Delos is rich in those moments of inspiration when a composer first comes under the spell of poetry. His marriages of subtly charged music with an eclectic modernist twist to emotionally provocative, introspective texts work best in Those Who Loved Medusa, set to Kate Gale’s haunting poem, in which Hila Plitmann gloriously evokes Medusa deep in a lover’s night: "Turn me into that thing you fear. Make me monster … wet, ripe, swollen." While Delos founding director Carol Rosenberger, returning to the recording studios for the first time in recent years, infuses the involving piano part with characteristic chaste beauty, percussionist Bruce Carver adds whisks and whips of colour to the feminist drama.
Also notable is In the Rear-View Mirror, Now, a nod to vintage Hollywood set to the composer’s own poems, with Tali Tadmor taking over at the piano and Abel adding ambience and a unique lyrical line at the organ. The second in the cycle, "The World Clock," is a bittersweet, politically tinged paean to San Francisco before it was taken over by Silicon Valley millionaires. The third, "The Nature of Friendship," includes tips of the hat to Barbra Streisand’s old Broadway hit "People" and a snatch from Berg’s Lulu.
Abel heads in another direction with The Ocean of Forgiveness, exploring intimate poems of love, desolation and reconciliation by Joanne Regenhardt in quiet, moving ways. ... Recorded at The Bridge studios in Glendale, California, the sound is always natural and gorgeous.
The Journal of Singing
By Gregory Berg
Mark Abel is one of our most accomplished art song composers, with an impressive body of work that grows by the day. One hallmark of his legacy is his artistic adventurousness; he is a composer with bold and ambitious ideas and the resourcefulness to nearly always bring those ideas to full and effective fruition. His latest collection is a hallmark to his restless imagination and bold inventiveness and marks a new level of excellence we have not seen before.
The standout among these compelling works has to be “Those Who Loved Medusa,” a captivating setting of a remarkable text by Kate Gale, a friend of and frequent collaborator with the composer. Her text describes Medusa as the tragic victim of rape at the hands of Poseidon; her terrible ordeal is compounded when Poseidon’s jealous wife Athena unjustly blames Medusa for the assault and unleashes the curse that transforms Medusa into the monstrous creature that turns to stone any man who catches even a glimpse of her hideous features. It is a tale of operatic intensity and Abel responds with a setting that is shattering and haunting. The piece combines solo soprano and piano with an array of percussion instruments that give the work a sense of otherworldly mystery. One of Abel’s daring choices is to craft a vocal line that is cruelly stratospheric, undoubtedly to help convey Medusa’s anger and anguish. It is a tribute to the composer’s careful craftsmanship as well as soprano Hila Plitmann’s skillful singing that the text can be understood, and the sound never veers into stridency. It is a remarkable achievement. Carol Rosenberger is at the piano and contributes mightily to this work’s impact, as does percussionist Bruce Carver.
The disk opens with “The Invocation,” which features a touching text by the composer himself that reflects on life’s uncertainties and difficulties. It reads in part:
We are tempted, we succumb,
sometimes dangle from the bottom rung.
All the while echoing the saddest songs we’ve sung.
If this text is any indication, Abel is as capable a poet as he is a composer. The words work beautifully on their own, but they also cry out for music to give them flight. Abel responds with a setting that is sensitive and evocative. The disk ends with another of Abel’s own texts, “The Benediction,” which reads as an unsettling twist on Katharine Lee Bates’ “America, the Beautiful.” In Abel’s poem, the line “from sea to shining sea” is interspersed with unsettling images of empty malls, thinning small towns, and a young man harboring angry resentment as he cleans his gun in contemplation of a violent act. Abel is painting a vivid portrait of a modern America grappling with discontent and uncertainty. Fortunately for us, Abel finishes his text on a radiant note of hope:
Far New England, autumn time.
A child stares at red leaves
and wonders how a miracle is made.
She will grow and she will know before long
the path of grace, the changing face of our age
-- ever shifting, elusive, turned toward the future.
Of this she is sure: Yesterday is gone
and open hearts must point the way.
And with her go the hopes of all,
from sea to shining sea.
Abel’s texts are also featured in the three songs that comprise “In the Rear View Mirror, Now.” This particular song cycle is laden with discouragement and disillusionment, and one finds scarcely a hint of hope within it. The songs are perched in the same relentlessly high tessitura as the aforementioned “Those Who Loved Medusa,” but what worked so effectively there feels a bit ill-fitting here. Nevertheless, one cannot argue with Hila Plitmann’s skillful and expressive singing or with Abel’s gift for conveying unvarnished emotional truth, however unpleasant it sometimes needs to be. Far lovelier is “The Ocean of Forgiveness,” a cycle of five songs with exquisite texts by Joanne Regenhardt. This is the most consistently beautiful and atmospheric music on the disk, and these songs allow mezzo soprano Janelle DeStefano to demonstrate the full radiance and grace of her singing. Pianist Tali Tadmor is kept very busy by Abel’s complex and highly expressive accompaniments but dispatches them with dazzling ease.
Abel was a professional journalist for more than two decades, and clearly his work as a composer is richly informed by his keen interest in societal issues and concerns well beyond the arena of music making. One can also glean from his extensive and thorough program notes what a thoughtful composer he is. Nothing he writes is accidental or arbitrary; he is a meticulous craftsman who obviously cares deeply about the songs he writes and shares with the world. May there be many more to come.
Opera News
By Arlo McKinnon
[Abel’s] style is an eclectic mix of rock and classical elements. Time and Distance, the fourth release by Delos Records of his vocal music, consists of classical art songs — some of them standalone works, others complete song cycles. The album feels unified; you could imagine its being performed in concert in its entirety.
The majority of the songs feature texts by Abel; “Those Who Loved Medusa” sets a poem by contemporary poet Kate Gale, and the song cycle “The Ocean of Forgiveness” sets five poems by Joanne Regenhardt. The texts concern everything from discovery to suicide, broken love to our current political reality. There are many pop-culture references, particularly in the texts by Abel.
The vocal lines are dramatic and through-composed, faithful to the texts, but they tend to dwell in the highest tessitura … . Hila Plitmann is quite the coloratura acrobat … (while) mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano handles the higher reaches of her performances with evident vocal mastery.
Abel’s vocal writing defaults to the altissimo register. This is most effective in “Those Who Loved Medusa,” the extended song that expresses Medusa’s rage at Poseidon for raping her, as well as her bitterness that it was she, not he, who was punished by Athena … .
There are many beautiful moments throughout the disc. The opening and closing songs, “The Invocation” and “The Benediction,” have much to offer, as does “Those Who Loved Medusa.” Abel varies the overall moods of the different songs, so they’re never too predictable.
CultureSpot LA
By Theodore Bell
Composer Mark Abel's Delos CD release Time and Distance (DE 3550) features acclaimed Los Angeles area vocalists soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano. Their task was immense in this endeavor — to mediate operatic texts by Abel and area poets Joanne Regenhardt and Kate Gale that address difficult social, psychological and political issues. The collection has a unique LA sound and attitude that makes it a fine example of the creativity and currency of the local chamber music scene. Abel’s settings fuse chamber and contemporary styles seamlessly together to achieve a spacious feel with only a small ensemble. Ethereal swaths of sound contrast with minimalist passages to support flowing lyrical vocal lines. There is just enough complexity to pique the mind and attune the ear to it without overpowering the verse. In addition to Abel on organ, the ensembles include pianists Tali Tadmor and Carol Rosenberger and percussionist Bruce Carver.
Plitmann brings her exceptional talent to three works, the first of which, “Those Who Loved Medusa,” links the modern #MeToo movement and the legend of Medusa through text inspired by Los Angeles poet Kate Gale. Carver opens the piece with shimmering crotale tones to set an ancient context before the music emotes to Plitmann’s dramatic account of Medusa’s rape by Poseidon. Her voice is unsettling as she conjures the fear in the victims, who are then intimidated by deeply embedded social fears inspired by historical misogyny and abuse of women. Lines like “Carry this story forward. Rape is the fault of the victim” taunt the casual listener. Athena’s rage and her misdirected blame is palpable in the rhythmic intensity that climactically finishes with Medusa’s monstrous transformation. A plaintive Medusa attempts to move on from the crime and accept her new identity. Her agitation dissipates with the help of a magical instrument known as the rainstick, and she ended with a gentle portrayal of those who sought Medusa in exile.
Plitmann again presents an affective portrayal of lingering dissonance with three songs comprising “In the Rear View Mirror Now,” only this time from the personal perspective of one’s past. The music is upbeat and sonorous and beautifully expresses her second-guessing and bittersweet memories. Tadmor and Abel meld piano and organ to create accompaniment to Plitmann’s emotive vocals. A piano figure is counterbalanced against deep bass tones from Abel’s organ, the two interacting in a seemingly perpetual motion.
“The Long Goodbye” depicts a love relationship that degenerates slowly over time, damaged by a lack of commitment. The music and text oscillate between resignation and resolve as Plitmann sings with a wonderful sensitivity and tenderness. “The World Clock” reflects on the technology boom in San Francisco as a cause of the city losing its most distinctive characteristics — its minorities, artists and intellectuals. Abel’s music deftly supports his own sentiments — dismay over the loss of the heart of the city, and as the song ends, we return to Los Angeles. The cycle’s finale, “The Nature of Friendship,” explores human attachment. Pedal-tones from the organ grind in clashing semitones to accompany Plitmann’s exposition with an illusory reference to Barbra Streisand’s “People.” Her lament over lost friends and societal troubles is moving.
Not all is bleak, however. Plitmann returns on the final track of the collection for “The Benediction,” to sing a final lamentation that resolves into a dreamy glimmer of hope for future generations. The contemporary subject is the loss of America’s natural beauty through our ineffective stewardship.
DeStefano is equally evocative with her singing of “The Invocation,” which serves as the introduction to the disc and effectively sets the overall tone. She has a rich, warm and nuanced voice that provides subtle affective interpretations of Abel’s text. Immediately, Rosenberger’s nimble piano propels the listener vicariously down life’s path, followed by a poetic retrospection realizing the dangerous seductions and close calls that one must unknowingly brush in the course of living one’s life.
“The Ocean of Forgiveness” is based on five poems of Joanne Regenhardt that appear in the collection “Soundings.” DeStefano is elegant in her depiction of “Desert Wind,” and a feeling of tender remembrance manages to shine through in “Sally’s Suicide.” “In Love With the Sky” finds her expressing many shifting, fleeting moods; she is impressively versatile in her expression, and Tadmor’s touch was gentle and persuasive as well.
Bravo! A very creative collection of song with extraordinary singers and timely topics.
Fanfare Magazine
By Huntley Dent
As a former journalist who rose to the position of foreign editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, composer Mark Abel has a strong stake in his own words, and he writes striking, often stark lyrics. In his 2012 song cycle The Dream Gallery, a character named Carol begins her song with the lines, “My husband is a killer. / Not the kind with an axe or a gun, / but a piranha in the asphalt sea.” These gritty, socially conscious texts feel like a crossover from Abel’s former profession.
Composing art songs in this country rarely leads to a major career, but Delos has been steadfast in believing in Abel’s talent, and this new release is its fourth with him. The texts are largely by him, but one poem, “Those Who Loved Medusa,” is by Los Angeles poet Kate Gale, and “The Ocean of Forgiveness” is a cycle based on five poems by La Jolla poet Joanne Regenhardt, a former opera singer. Unlike The Dream Gallery, where varied musical idioms, including rock and jazz, are orchestrated in depth to bring out the seven characters who stand in for seven California cities, here the musical language is often spare, and the accompaniments are either piano only, piano with organ (played by the composer), or piano and percussion.
When he depicted those California cities, Abel didn’t aim at pictorial effects but instead chose a single character caught in a dramatic situation reflective of each locale. This new collection, under the abstract title of Time and Distance, is at once similar and dissimilar. There’s still reportage about current issues (sexual abuse of women, the invasion and takeover of San Francisco by techies), but there’s a strong tendency to reflect, look over one’s shoulder, and ask what might have been. Disillusionment is a core theme, along with the ambiguity of “byways and detours” that interrupt life’s journey, keeping it from fulfilling the things people thought they’d achieve.
Abel, born in 1948, is an intelligent commentator on his own music, and his extensive program notes help us navigate it. But as a listening experience, Time and Distance is direct rather than elusive. Musically Abel wants to elicit new facets of art song, drawing, I’d say, on two Modernist strains: The emotional ambivalence and subtle glints in Hugo Wolf and the Expressionist angst and sorrow of Schoenberg—not that his music sounds like either. Wolf can be a distanced composer of fleeting phrases that vanish before they resolve; Schoenberg can be intense to the point of lurid melodrama. I hear Abel’s songs trying to come to terms with these opposing forces.
He describes the first song, “The Invocation,” scored for mezzo-soprano and piano, as an introduction to the entire program, with its “we” instead of “I” casting a wide gaze and its theme of emotional ambiguity. The idiom is spare to the point that the piano part might dwindle to a single unharmonized line, the tapping out of an arpeggio or a motto of associated notes. Mezzo Janelle DeStefano has a warm, appealing voice, but she isn’t allowed to settle on a comforting emotion; the piano part, expressively played by Carol Rosenberger, is like a voice from another room. The two lines pay attention to each other without escaping their separate viewpoints. It’s an intriguing way to structure a song of private self-reflection that ends on a wistful question: “Why must happiness be earned?”
The wide vocal leaps that characterize Schoenberg’s songs are adopted by Abel for similar reasons: to depict disquiet, anxiety, a lack of resolution and existential loss. The second song, “Those Who Loved Medusa,” adheres to this tactic in the vocal line, but the mythic richness of the past is depicted in exotic percussion (gong, rainstick, crotale). Medusa narrates her own grim story of rape by Poseidon, Athena’s curse that turned her into a monster, and the seductive power she continues to have over men. Gale is perhaps overly explicit in announcing that her poem is about women’s “culpability” in rape, but the link to “#MeToo” is apposite and powerful. Soprano Hila Plitmann impressively negotiates the song’s wide, generally atonal leaps.
The theme of a vanished world is central to the program’s first song cycle, “In the Rear View Mirror, Now,” where Abel’s text is a darkly glittering kaleidoscope of pop references (Raymond Chandler, Barbra Streisand, iPhones), the hallucinatory San Francisco in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and hints of Berg’s Lulu. Plitmann is soloist, expertly delivering a vocal line that’s often more melodic than before, although not always. Abel’s gloomy organ part might be nostalgic for the Fillmore as he laments lost friends who drifted away for reasons “bland and evasive”— one hears a middle-aged accusation that ends on a note of sharp bitterness: “Don’t kid yourself. / They’d have kicked you off the Titanic’s lifeboat / if it came to that.”
By this point you’ll have gathered that Abel is standing in as a contemporary Jeremiah, and some listeners won’t respond to constant lamentation. But then, some listeners don’t respond to Wolf, Berg and Schoenberg, either. Abel, being just as serious about art song as those great predecessors, demands that the listener adapt to his music, not the other way around. The “pessimism and emptiness” of the “Rear View Mirror” songs need alleviation, which comes in the five Regenhardt settings, where the beauty of desert and sky enters, along with human virtues: patience, compassion, empathy and lasting union in relationships. Abel isn’t conceding completely to those things; there’s a song, “Sally’s Suicide,” to maintain the theme of loss. Ironically, it draws from him a rich, almost operatic piano part, and the singer, DeStefano this time, adds a welcome layer of feminine warmth to the cycle.
The last song, ironically titled “The Benediction,” is Abel’s commentary on the “frightening fissures” in our current cultural divide. In a panorama from the Pacific Coast Highway to the Deep South, Midwestern heartland and New England, each verse calls up a different rhythm and mood in the piano part, with Plitmann’s high vocals floating above. I’d call this ambitious song Abel’s nod to Charles Ives, a composer who merged Americana, Emersonian vision, and avant-garde musical gestures. “The Benediction” is in keeping with the program’s pessimistic theme, but it becomes gentler and more hopeful at the end, portraying a young girl in New England who stands for a better, more open-minded future.
I can recommend any lover of art songs to have a go at this challenging but heartfelt recording, which I’ve tried to describe objectively in order to indicate Abel’s sincerity and integrity, both as writer and composer. The full effect, as always, cannot be grasped without hearing the songs, and the excellence of all the singers and instrumentalists is a considerable asset. I’ll underscore that few current songwriters rival Abel’s intriguing texts and their reach into so many psychological and cultural issues. Meaning and melody go hand in hand in a very contemporary way, which I truly admire.
Pizzicato Magazine
By Norbert Tischer
Composer Mark Abel—who has in the past devoted himself to rock music, then journalism—has since become one of the most interesting figures in American contemporary music.
This album presents him as a composer of art songs. The songs grew either out of his own texts, or also—as in the cycle “The Ocean of Forgiveness”—poetry by Joanne Regenhardt. All of the texts deal with actual societal issues (as in the song “The Benediction,” about a torn, divided America), though a few go as far back as Greek mythology. Abel succeeds in clothing such strong texts in equally strong, emotion-laden music.
The accompaniments employ piano for the most part, though a few songs are further enhanced by percussion and organ. And much is done in such accompaniments to create atmospherically descriptive frameworks to the singing.
Soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano perform Abel’s music with bravura and much feeling, sensitively supported by Carol Rosenberger at the piano.
Classical-Modern Music Review
By Grego Applegate Edwards
As I have lived my life and I will admit I have, and not for any short time so far either...I realize that there are certain things that are an acquired taste, that not every human is fated to appreciate, that in many ways go against a prevailing view of what it is to be "cool" or "popular." The contemporary lieder or song is probably such a thing. In the house I reside in I can guarantee that if I put on such a genre of music I will be subjected to commentary of an unappreciative sort. No less than if I were to play an Albert Ayler recording when he was especially energetic in his expressiveness. It has not stopped me from listening nor will it. I might be wrong about some things but in this case I am sure of myself. I am correct! Some people may hate the late string quartets of Beethoven. Well. It is their loss.
So one is rewarded in the exploration of such musical territory with riches at times, sometimes very exceptionally so, times that make it all worthwhile. I speak today of such a thing, namely, composer Mark Abel's new program of songs, Time and Distance (Delos 3550). These are most definitely songs for our time, Modern surely, not outgoingly in the sense that they are not in an avant garde mode so much as they resound with a most thoroughgoing, advanced harmonic-melodic musicality. They say lyrically something for our time as well. Not sentimental, artful yet not self-consciously so. The words are alternately by the composer, Kate Gale and Joanne Regenhardt.
The songs and song cycles, five of them, are set for soprano (Hila Plitmann), mezzo-soprano (Janelle DeStefano), plus piano (Tali Tadmor or Carol Rosenberger) and are joined by percussion (Bruce Carver) on one, organ (the composer) on another. The performances are excellent. Ms. Plitmann to me is especially captivating, but that is not to say Ms. DeStefano is not. She is.
These are songs to grow into. I find them the more sublime the more I listen to this program. There is an endless musicality to them that never grows stale. They are, I believe, milestones in song for today, and to me very beautiful indeed. So I recommend strongly that you hear them.
Fanfare Magazine
By Maria Nockin
Composer Mark Abel’s new disc, Time and Distance, contains the world premieres of two song cycles and three substantial individual works I hope to hear at a live recital in the near future. ... Abel combines tuneful original passages with rock and jazz elements to form unique tonal structures. With a colorful blend of styles, he communicates the nature of each work, often with a powerful emotional punch. Mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano and soprano Hila Plitmann are “crossover” singers who straddle the void between concert, opera, and musical theater. Both sing with the kind of diction that makes it possible to walk across the room or even do a chore and not miss a word of the poetry.
Abel wrote both the music and the lyrics for The Invocation and The Benediction, strong pieces enveloping and anchoring the two song cycles that form the main dishes of Abel’s program. In the opening piece, The Invocation, the mezzo reminds us of the answerless questions posed by modern existence. Life offers us a void that gives no hints on how to achieve happiness during our sojourn here. Must we earn happiness? Carol Rosenberger’s fluent playing is the perfect accompaniment to DeStefano’s rose-velvet tones. In the closer, The Benediction, Abel’s hope for a brighter future lights our land “from sea to shining sea.” The bright, sunny tones of Hila Plitmann and pianist Tali Tadmor bring hope to what would otherwise be contemplation of our era’s many inadequacies.
Plitmann continues with Those Who Loved Medusa, a song that has a text by Los Angeles poet Kate Gale. It speaks to the tragedy of so many young women who have only recently begun to speak out with “Me too” stories of sexual assault. Just as Medusa was found guilty when Poseidon raped her in ancient Greece, we still blame the victim in cases of sexual aggression. Although we think of Medusa as a horrible monster, she was a beautiful girl before Poseidon’s wife, Athena, cursed her and changed the strands of her hair into snakes. Plitmann’s unadorned silvery high notes remind the listener that young girls are a precious, beautiful treasure not to be wasted. Carol Rosenberger accompanies her with virtuosic style and Bruce Carver’s delicate percussion gives the work a feeling of Hellenic antiquity.
In the Rear View Mirror, Now is a cycle of three songs that speak to our modern condition. These days we are apt to listen to a recital, not in the concert hall, but where we so often hear music instead, in the car. First, Plitmann, Tadmor and organist Mark Abel tell of a romance doomed by a clash of personalities. Next, they lament the lost world of North Beach, Chinatown, and the Haight. In the third song they deplore the insubstantial friendships of the modern era and finish with, “They’d have kicked you off the Titanic’s lifeboat if it came to that.” As a journalist for more than two decades, Abel has seen a great deal of the world and he often reflects its grimy underbelly. Here, he shows his mastery of tragedy as composer, musician, and poet.
Abel’s song cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness contains five poems by Joanne Regenhardt that describe the glory of nature and some of the joys and sorrows felt by those who live in it. The titles are: “Desert Wind,” “Sally’s Suicide,” “In Love with the Sky,” “Reunion,” and “Patience.” The final song sums it up best: “We wait until the leaves are gone and every shell washed clean by the ocean of forgiveness.” The poems are part of Regenhardt’s Canadian-published collection Soundings.
I was particularly pleased by DeStefano’s exquisite beauty of tone and her variety of vocal colors as she and Tadmor performed “Patience,” which ends with “Until together we will love the world.” If only we could. What we can do is listen to the music on this well-recorded disc and contemplate both word and tone. This is a recording to keep in the car for meaningful listening.
Opera Lively
By Luiz Gazzola
Opera Lively interviewee Mark Abel has released his fourth CD with Delos. … Those familiar with his (previously reviewed) chamber opera Home Is a Harbor and his excellent song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless will find some old friends here. The poetry of Kate Gale had already been set to music and recorded by soprano Hila Plitmann and pianist Tali Tadmor in Palm Trees, and mezzo Janelle DeStefano sang the double roles of Linda and Lenore in Harbor.
These talented artists are again put to good use. The two singers do very well, with the Grammy-winning Plitmann once again displaying her agility, range, and purity of sound (I particularly loved her in The Benediction), while DeStefano is warm and engaging in the reflexive and melodious The Ocean of Forgiveness.
As far as the poetry goes, I found the present album to be even more interesting than the one I have previously reviewed. We are talking contemporary music, and these lyrics and poems are, well, very contemporary indeed. For example, Kate Gale's poem "Those Who Loved Medusa" talks about the mythical creature's rape by Poseidon, with a jealous Athena being very accusatory: "Rape is the fault of the victim." The song describes how Medusa, before being made into a monster, was simply a woman who was the victim of repeated abuse. The lines are powerful and fit right into recent events.
This theme of the here and now continues with Mark Abel's own strong poetry in the short cycle made up of The Long Goodbye, The World Clock and The Nature of Friendship, which describe the gentrification of San Francisco and the impact of psychotherapy, social media and technology on human relationships, complete with a quotation of Berg's Lulu.
Even more political is the song I liked the best, The Benediction, when again the composer writes his own courageous lyrics, addressing the fractured nature of current American society, all the way to the gun-toting lone wolves who commit mass murder: "Somewhere a young man cleans his gun. 'They have stolen my America,' he cries. Who will draw the poison from his heart? A girl or God, we pray." Abel had already added: "I sense a building tide sweeping across a discontented land that needs renewal."
Despite its somber tone, The Benediction ends on a positive note: "Of this she is sure: yesterday is gone and open hearts must point the way. And with her go the hopes of all, from sea to shining sea." [Reviewer's note: Insert goosebumps here].
This tempers a bit the bitterness of the longer (and very beautiful) song cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness, which sets to music five poems of Joanne Regenhardt that are laden with despair and suicide, echoing the very first song, The Invocation, where Abel also proposes a bleak picture that ends with the line "Why must happiness be earned?"
Musically speaking, low, melancholic Bs and B-flats for the organ, and rumbling, deep percussion add some variety to the usual piano-and-voice art song setup, easing up what I found to be the only shortcoming of this album: some vocal lines along the 57 minutes appear … with a similar and recurring structure of long sustained high notes. I suppose that, besides being a valid style, it has to do with the emotions being colored here, which often evoke a plaintive feeling.
In summary, this is an artsy (in the good sense), intelligent, sensitive, and sophisticated album that encourages deep thinking when it touches a number of contemporary issues, with exquisite lyrics and technically accomplished instrumentalists and singers. It is a very recommended purchase for lovers of contemporary music and poetry.
Beyond Criticism
By Matthew Gurewitsch
"Those Who Loved Medusa," to verse by Kate Gale, recycles Greek mythology for the #MeToo era. Medusa, it seems, had many suitors back in the day but spurned them all, until the god Poseidon came along and raped her in a temple. "You wore red," the goddess Athena scolds after the fact, blaming the victim. "You smiled." Post-Poseidon, her hair now a mass of hissing snakes, the monster Medusa survives to receive lovers in her island cave. "It isn't true," she insists towards the close, "they all died."
Scorching stuff, savagely sounded by the soprano Hila Plitmann, partnered by Carol Rosenberger, piano, and Bruce Carver, now glittering, now thunderous, on percussion.
Fanfare Magazine
By Colin Clarke
Composer Mark Abel is clearly at home writing for the human voice. The musical vocabulary on display here is approachable, mostly easy on the ear and also somewhat timeless. The first piece, The Invocation, sets a text by the composer on life’s ambiguities. At once an acceptance of the human condition and an extended musical question mark, it is given an assured performance by mezzo Janelle DeStefano. The close recording seems to refer more to popular recorded music balances but is nonetheless involving, and the rapport between DeStefano and pianist Carol Rosenberger is clear.
Moving from a portrait of our lot as humans (“It is a trek. We see that now”) to Greek legend, Abel sets a text by Kate Gale, Those Who Loved Medusa. Not his first setting of Gale (see The Palm Trees Are Restless on the Delos disc Home Is a Harbor), this piece adds percussion to the mix, from the crotales of the opening to the ritualistic pounding of a drum in the background. Myths have fierce contemporary relevance, and nowhere more so than here, where the rape of Medusa plugs directly into the “Me too” movement. Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann is a superbly assured interpreter, fiercely focused in the disturbing subject matter. And disturbing it certainly should be.
The text for the extended song cycle In the Rear View Mirror, Now is again furnished by the composer. The addition of an organ (played by the composer) to the voice and piano adds a depth to the sound picture, as well as casting a certain haunting shadow. The three poems are linked by “a shared umbrella of disillusion,” in the composer’s own words. Plitmann’s upper register is tested and comes across with laser-like precision, yet without ever sounding uncomfortable. The second song, “The World Clock,” is a requiem for a city ushered in by an “iPhone World Clock”; but the most powerful song is the final “The Nature of Friendship.” Plitmann’s unerring sense of line enables her to narrate the song most effectively; the text slips in a nice reference to Schigolch in “Lulu’s London garret.”
Ceding the text to former opera singer Joanne Regenhardt, the cycle The Ocean of Forgiveness is a five-song exploration of Nature and its power. The smokier voice of a mezzo (DeStefano) is the perfect choice for this world where simple, unaccompanied vocal gestures can speak volumes. The musical language itself is more complex than in the pieces heard so far; the desolation of “Sally’s Suicide” is palpable, while it is the striking simplicity of “In Love with the Sky” that makes it all the more powerful. Tali Tadmor’s piano playing is particularly striking in this song cycle. The piano has a voice of its own, one might contend, and a strong voice at that. The single piano line that opens “Patience” is an incredibly poignant example.
Finally, there comes The Benediction (text by the composer). It is a cry for “truth and reason” in an uncertain America and holds at its heart a message of hope in young people who, with open hearts, can take us forwards. Plitmann’s performance is searing in its intensity.
This is a most varied collection, therefore, from a composer who clearly finds his best expression through setting texts that resonate with him on a deep level.
Infodad.com
By Mark J. Estren
Abel’s music, which like that of many contemporary composers includes jazz and rock elements, is firmly in the service of the words he chooses to set – by himself, Kate Gale and Joanne Regenhardt. The music ... gains stature in supporting and enhancing the verbiage, which is clearly what matters most to Abel in these songs. … As songs and song cycles exploring issues-of-the-moment, the material is effective.
… Abel uses Those Who Loved Medusa ... to support strictly contemporary views of rape and rapine. The well-considered use of percussion here is the song’s most-effective element. The three-song cycle In the Rear View Mirror, Now, in which Abel himself plays the organ, is about attachments, both personal and to the world, and how they change and disappoint.
Soprano Hila Plitmann handles all the songs with care and emotive skill, but even more striking is mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano’s delivery of the emotionalism of The Ocean of Forgiveness, the cycle on this disc that reaches out most strongly to listeners. This cycle works because, although Regenhardt’s words are partly inspired by specific locales, such as a desert area near San Diego, the words do not insist on topicality or on dealing with straitened concerns of the current sociopolitical environment. Instead, they use highly specific occurrences – as in Sally’s Suicide, the second of the five songs – to try to connect with listeners facing their own turmoil and life difficulties. Abel’s musical support of the words is particularly effective in this cycle … .
Praise for "Home Is a Harbor"
Gramophone
By Donald Rosenberg
The two works receiving their premiere recordings on this disc show American composer Mark Abel to have an affinity for vocal settings in diverse contexts. Home Is a Harbor is his first opera, while The Palm Trees Are Restless gives striking musical life to five poems by Kate Gale.
In both pieces, Abel employs a colorful blend of styles … (that) serve the emotional nature of each work to bracing and poignant effect. The opera traces the odyssey of twin sisters in California who set out as idealists and learn the challenging ways of the world. The moral is a 21st-century variation on “there’s no place like home.”
All of the characters in Home Is a Harbor (are) connected by circumstances that bring them together, pull them apart and, at the end, bind them. Abel’s lucid narrative and vibrant vocal lines, combined with telling orchestrations for a chamber ensemble, make the work an affecting experience. The cast is strong and Benjamin Makino conducts the La Brea Sinfonietta in a vivid performance.
… The song cycle eschews idealism for hard realities of life. The verses are bursts of feeling that Abel sets to vocal lines of strenuous extremes. The brilliant soprano Hila Plitmann manages every leap and switch of emotional gears with fearless commitment, and pianist Tali Tadmor matches her in power and subtlety.
Opera News
By Joshua Rosenblum
Mark Abel (b. 1948) has devoted most of his composing career to writing song cycles, including those represented on two previous Delos releases. The current disc is a recording of his first opera, Home is a Harbor. Abel spent some formative years as a rock musician, and he has a knack for integrating catchy, interesting grooves into a comfortably tonal but frequently creative classical style. The composer wrote what is essentially a prose libretto for his opera, which could have led to some meandering in the score, but the rock and jazz elements help to provide form and structure.
Abel’s decidedly contemporary story has potential: Lisa and Laurie, twin sisters from California’s central coast, set out on their respective paths in the world — one as an artist in Brooklyn, the other as a banker in Irvine, California. Both encounter shallowness and professional disillusionment, return home and vow to do some good in the world, specifically by creating an organization to help homeless veterans. The characters are realistic and the situations are relevant ... . The libretto is firmly in the vernacular (“Awesome dinner, mom. Hey, Lisa, let’s hit the beach before the sun goes down”) … (and) the music is unfailingly pleasant (except for one deliberately bad pop song heard in a club) … .
The singers, led by sopranos Jamie Chamberlin and Ariel Pisturino, are particularly well perched along the spectrum between opera and musical theater, which makes them perfectly suited to this crossover piece. All the vocals land with immediacy. Among the other gifted cast members are baritone Babatunde Akinboboye, as Laurie’s ill-fated boyfriend Lance; baritone E. Scott Levin, as Laurie’s creepy, amoral boss; and bass Carver Cossey, who creates a vivid portrait of Lou, an elderly poet. Janelle DeStefano demonstrates versatility playing both the twins’ warmhearted mother and Lisa’s cynical, inflexible SoHo art dealer. Nimble tenor Jon Lee Keenan is amusingly superficial as Lisa’s all-talk-and-no-action slacker boyfriend. The instrumentalists of the La Brea Sinfonietta under Benjamin Makino do exceptionally well with Abel’s hybrid style, which includes imaginative use of electric organ.
The disc also contains a cycle for piano and voice called The Palm Trees Are Restless, settings of five poems by Kate Gale. (Abel) provides empathetic musical illumination of Gale’s personal, expressive poetry, and is attentive to the melodic contours implied by her phrases. The best song is the Weill-esque “Crater Light,” which depicts a frank barroom encounter and a divorce over sexual incompatibility. The always-impressive Hila Plitmann, a specialist in contemporary art song, sings with a plush, enveloping tone and amazingly clear diction all the way to the top of her range. Pianist Tali Tadmor is her adept and sensitive partner.
Fanfare Magazine
By Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold
(Mark Abel's opera) Home Is a Harbor ... is a compelling musical theater piece which combines classical and modern musical elements with contemporary dramatic situations.
Harbor is a coming of age story about two twin sisters from Morro Bay, Ca., who set out after high school to find their way in what Abel calls “the swifter currents of the real world.” After experiencing the first flush of artistic and business success and romance, both girls begin to feel at odds with the values of the worlds in which they have immersed themselves. Amid the swirling chaos of a war in Afghanistan and the all-too-blatant visage of poverty and homelessness in America, the sisters return to Morro Bay in search of the meaning that has eluded them in New York and Irvine.
Abel has penned his own libretto, and his prose, for all its sparseness, is literate and eloquent. His use of contemporary diction, when first seen only on the page, might seem a barrier to melodic vocal line, but Abel amazes with his compact setting of the text that has a directness and elegance of its own. ... The condensing of events adds to the operatic Angst. Altogether, the opera moves with the briskness of successive snapshots, lingering only at the end to settle into and impart its wisdom.
... Abel’s writing for the voice is fluid, melodic, and at the same time natural, especially as it weaves Sprechstimme in and out of traditionally sung lines. There are some memorable set pieces, such as Lisa’s soliloquy which begins act II, Laurie’s aria “Help Me” which concludes it, and the sisters’ gentle duet at the finale. There are orchestral interludes of great beauty as well, such as the opera’s Prelude with its jazzy elements and moody melancholy, and the evocation of the rain, the birds, and the harbor at the end. Abel also knows how to extract remarkable color from the small orchestra, using the woodwinds, organ, and celesta and vibraphone to great effect and evoking unusual sounds such as the chime of cell phones or the delicate tinkling of rain.
The cast is uniformly strong and adept at contemporary music. Sopranos Jamie Chamberlin as Lisa and Ariel Pisturino as Laurie possess clear, secure voices which complement each other, Pisturino’s being the darker colored. Babatunde Akinboboye contributes a rich baritone to the role of Lance, while baritone E. Scott Levin gives a slippery edge to Liam and tenor Jon Lee Keenan gives Larry a slick presence. Janelle DeStefano uses her warm mezzo to great textual effect as Lenore, and Carver Cossey’s smoky bass conjures up the aging poet. The La Brea Sinfonietta under Benjamin Makino plays with great sensitivity.
The accompanying work ... is Abel’s setting of five poems by Kate Gale, The Palm Trees Are Restless. Sung hauntingly by Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann, partnered by the excellent Tali Tadmor on piano, this cycle explores contrasting scenes and emotions: a tender sexual encounter with the bleak barrenness of Los Angeles, a candid bar room conversation and a monologue groping for memories of an absent sister, and finally the bitter revelations swirling around a divorce—all born from the pain of the human experience. Abel embraces these contrasts fluidly, moving from jaunty Brechtian utterances, to evocative tone painting for the piano, to spiky staccato and lilting melody. In Plitmann, he has a singer whose clear bell-like soprano has a distinctive capacity for both dramatic and subtle colors, as well as impeccable diction, and she vividly inhabits the changing landscape of the cycle.
These two new works by Mark Abel come highly recommended for all enthusiasts of contemporary music, and for those who believe firmly that opera and art song are NOT dying arts, here is tangible proof.
Read Fanfare's interview with Mark here
American Record Guide
By Richard Sininger
American composer Mark Abel has written several song cycles. This recording contains his most recent cycle, The Palm Trees Are Restless; but more important, perhaps, it contains his first opera, Home Is a Harbor. Looking over the cast bios, one is struck by the fact that nearly all the participants are California-based, making the point very clearly that that large Western state has become an important cultural hub in the country, and Mr. Abel is at the forefront of its musical life.
The opera deals with young twin sisters who set out on their post-high school lives in different directions, one as an art student who goes to NYU and the other who stays near home to attend college and wait for her soldier boyfriend. Both find disillusionment and sadness, only to return home in a third act which offers hope for the future, if from a slightly unbelievable (because it’s too good) situation. But even the ultra-optimistic ending does not destroy the effectiveness of the piece. It is short but filled with characters and situations that remind us all too well of the realities of our world.
Musically it is something of a pop opera, with a style full of hints of jazz and pop music. The voices are all operatically trained, but the orchestra’s instrumentation comprises mostly winds, percussion, piano and organ, with few strings. It comes across as a very modern accompaniment, but not at all unpleasant. The La Brea Sinfonietta, under Benjamin Makino, plays the score expertly.
All the singers do a fine job; I would not be surprised to read some of their names on the rosters of major opera companies. The two sopranos who sing the twins Lisa and Laurie, Jamie Chamberlin and Ariel Pisturino, create very believable young women with their well-supported sopranos. Best of the lot is Babatunde Akinboboye, whose rich baritone demands special notice from the listener. Most of the others have more than one role, and they create a slightly different sound for each character. As with many modern operas, the vocal line is not typical of romantic opera. But it is tonal and effective in conveying the drama of the situation.
The program ends with Mr. Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, where he sets five poems by Kate Gale. I find the poems fascinating reading ... . Mr. Abel’s music for them (is) performed very well by soprano Hila Plitmann, accompanied by Tali Tadmor at the piano.
Fanfare Magazine
By Maria Nockin
Having had a major critical success with his song cycle The Dream Gallery, Mark Abel has written his first opera, Home Is a Harbor. The three-act piece has not yet been staged (but) I am in hopes of seeing it performed because its exquisite score cries out for the addition of visual creativity.
The opera tells of twin sisters Lisa and Laurie, who have grown up in Central California’s bucolic, lightly populated seaside community of Morro Bay. Both sisters are sung by sopranos with excellent diction but different timbres. As Lisa, Jamie Chamberlin’s sound is shiny silver while Ariel Pisturino sings Laurie with warmth and the resonance of an oboe. A painter, Lisa leaves for college in New York City where she meets Larry, sung passionately by tenor Jon Lee Keenan. Laurie, who loves her life in California, begins attending school there.
Baritone Babatunde Akinboboye sings Laurie’s boyfriend, Lance, with a strong, virile voice. Lance joins the military to get money for college, but he returns severely injured. Lisa, too, comes back to California after having become disenchanted with the art world. In the final scene, the reunited twins begin to plan a community center that will serve homeless veterans.
Some of the most impressive music in the opera is not vocal. In the tradition of composers like Benjamin Britten, Abel’s most enchanting music describes the mysteries of the sea, its mists and its moods. The libretto is replete with current speech and shows the use of current technology such as texting at the dinner table, but it also incorporates short melodic numbers in arioso style and beautifully harmonized duets. The orchestral forces of the La Brea Sinfonietta under the direction of Benjamin Makino are small but potent. Abel’s use of organ, woodwinds, and percussion to provide musical colors is most ingenious.
The second work on the disc is Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless. The five dark poems by Kate Gale -- The Storm Drain, Los Angeles, Crater Light, Shura and The Great Divorce -- tell tales of disenfranchisement and loneliness among the crowds of an enormous city.
Grammy winner Hila Plitmann and virtuoso pianist Tali Tadmor bring cool, silver-clad sounds to The Storm Drain, a rhythmic pulse to Los Angeles, folk-like melodies to Crater Light, the pathos of a plaintive lament to Shura, along with spiky rhythms and dramatic punch to The Great Divorce. Gale’s throngs keep looking past each other. “That’s the problem with most people. They don’t actually see you,” she writes.
Abel’s musical setting echoes the melodic beauty of Les Six as he weaves a colorful tapestry around Gale’s poetic descriptions of the sadder side of life on the West Coast. This Delos recording has clear, pristine sound. I think opera enthusiasts and fans of new music will want to own this two-disc set.
CultureSpot LA
By David Maurer
“Art music” is a coded phrase for music that most people would consider strange, offbeat or eccentric. Mark Abel’s first opera, Home Is a Harbor, is all those things, but in a good way, mostly. This California-based composer has a unique sound that blends many influences and musical genres and offers an inventive vision of what a modern opera can be.
Abel has presented his vocal art music on two previous Delos releases, The Dream Gallery and Terrain of the Heart, but this is his most fully realized work. And he’s come the long way ’round to wind up here. As a young man, Abel was a rock musician. That led to a period of immersion in jazz improvisation, before putting music to the side as he pursued a career in journalism. Finally, the muse called him back to create a new kind of music that combines all of these previous influences, draped upon a classical framework.
As both composer and librettist, Abel offers a highly personal vision of the things that matter most to him. In music and words, he provides a map of sorts that lays out both the dysfunctional externalities of modern American urban life as well as the internal struggle to transcend those harsh realities to find beauty and meaning. Home Is a Harbor begins and ends in Morro Bay, a place of sanctity and calm that, not coincidentally, happens to be close to Abel’s home in Central California.
The story takes place between the years 2005 and 2011 and involves twin sisters who are on the verge of adulthood. Lisa (sung by Jamie Chamberlin) is a painter leaving home to attend NYU. In New York, she soon finds commercial success with her seascapes, but also is disheartened by the shallowness of trend followers and by the pressures put upon her to keep the dollars rolling in. Laurie (sung by Ariel Pisturino) is “a people person” and goes to a small local college before being bamboozled to sell reverse mortgages under the guise of helping people, until the 2007 housing collapse opens her eyes to the true nature of her job. Both women return to Morro Bay at the end, committed to helping those who are hurting most.
It’s amusing — not to mention somewhat jarring — to hear modern argot sung, sometimes spoken, in an opera. And there’s plenty of it here: the libretto is sprinkled with phrases like “chill out,” “what’s up?,” “go with the flow,” “get a grip,” etc., as well as a liberal smattering of proper nouns like Prius, The O.C. and even Rudy Giuliani that indicate place and time.
The two female leads are competent, but sound quite similar and without following the libretto, it can get confusing as to who is who. … I thought the male singers, especially baritone Babatunde Akinboboye (who sings the role of Lance, Laurie’s boyfriend), were overall more compelling.
Of course, as in any opera, the music is the ne plus ultra — the foundation upon which everything else rests. Happily, Abel presents a panoply of sounds, moods, textures and ideas that make listening to this well-recorded disc worthwhile. He brings an organ into the mix, from which he variously coaxes church sounds and rock sounds or mirrors the double bass. There are moments of humor as well, such as when Lisa visits a club and encounters a snatch of Madonna-like synth pop while waiting to hear a comically bad female singer known as The Yowler. The orchestra, La Brea Sinfonietta conducted by Benjamin Makino, features primarily woodwinds, some horns, as well as three percussionists. Notably, there are no violins used at all.
Let us hope that Abel finds a way to get this opera produced in Los Angeles, because with the right director it could be a terrific show.
As a bonus on disc two, Abel has set to music five poems of Los Angeles-based poet Kate Gale. The Palm Trees Are Restless is simply piano (Tali Tadmor) and voice (soprano Hila Plitmann) and overall conforms most closely to what most people would consider “art music.” Most of the poems are pretty dark, expressing a bleak landscape of bitter, scarred women ruminating on loss, perfidy and meaninglessness. Worth a listen … .
KZSU-FM, Stanford University
By Larry Koran
Composer Mark Abel was a 1960s student at Stanford who later became foreign editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. His first opera, Home Is a Harbor, successfully combines the expressive depth of classical music, the in-your-face impact of rock (he was once a rock musician) and the free-flowing and quasi-improvisatory nature of jazz.
The easy-to-listen-to and engaging music, featuring standout performances by young vocalists, is scored for the 13-player La Brea Sinfonietta, and includes an organ. The story follows twin sisters from Morro Bay on California’s bucolic Central Coast as they enter thorny career paths in Manhattan and Southern California. Early success, followed by the financial crisis of 2008/9, the human cost of the Afghanistan war and the emptiness of some of their peers, leads to decisions to return to more meaningful and moral lives in Morro Bay. Abel’s libretto covers a wide emotional landscape (youthful exuberance, tragedy, pathos, disillusion, humor) with satire and social commentary alongside.
The recording includes Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, which sets five Kate Gale poems to music for soprano and piano. Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann sings beautifully. Again, the listening is easy, and the emotional range wide.
Journal of Singing
By Gregory Berg
(Home Is a Harbor is) the first opera of Mark Abel, a skilled and assured composer of songs. … It is a coming-of-age story for two sisters who venture out from the relative safety and comfort of their small hometown to seek success in two different cities. By the time we’re done, we’ve touched on such issues as homelessness, the war in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, graft in the art world, and the angst and alienation of life in modern America.
The best thing about the work is its intriguing and colorful accompaniment, which is scored for small chamber orchestra. Abel obviously knows something about combining instrumental colors in arresting ways. It leaves one very hungry to hear more of this sort of thing from him. The best passages from this opera, such as its atmospheric prelude or the radiant duet sung by the sisters to close the work, point to Abel’s potential as an opera composer … .
The Palm Trees Are Restless is a setting of five poems by Los Angeles writer Kate Gale, one of the most gifted poets before the public today. The texts are a discerning reflection on modern life, and they seem to have inspired Abel to the summit of his powers. These are complex poems replete with sharply shifting moods and flavors, and in the hands of a lesser composer we could have been left with a chaotic jumble. Abel has found a way to harness and embrace the restless energy of these texts with masterful assurance and ingenuity.
The set opens with what is surely the loveliest song ever written about a storm drain, and it treats us to the composer’s unerring ear for color. It’s followed by “Los Angeles,” a lengthy and complicated text that captures the unique and endlessly varied character of the city, its inhabitants, and what life is like there. Gale’s text is a gauntlet of wildly divergent experiences and emotions, and Abel’s music brings it all thrillingly to life.
“Crater Light” is a sardonic expression of what it feels like to be abandoned by one’s lover; the title refers to how someone nursing such hurt is likely to view even something as lovely as moonlight as nothing but an aching reminder of the pleasures that someone else is enjoying. “Shura” is a song of haunting and mysterious beauty that also demonstrates the profound impact one can achieve by blending contrasting textures in telling ways. The set ends with quite a bang, courtesy of a hectoring song titled “The Great Divorce” that literally gives us one side of an angry conversation, as though we were eavesdropping as someone engaged in a furious phone call. Gale’s text is powerful in and of itself, but with Abel’s musical setting it gains even more visceral impact.
Fortunately for Abel, he has a soprano who manages to cope with (the cycle’s) punishing tessitura with surprising success. Hila Plitmann is to be commended for her exciting and expressive singing, and Tali Tadmor partners her at the piano with impressive aplomb.
Journal of Singing
By Kathleen Roland-Silverstein
(excerpt from analysis of the score)
Mark Abel is a California-based composer with an already impressive body of vocal work … . With The Palm Trees Are Restless, Abel has set the haunting and very sensual lyrics of Los Angeles poet Kate Gale to great effect. Premiered by Grammy-award winning soprano Hila Plitmann, Palm Trees is an excellent choice for a soprano voice able to negotiate the demanding tessitura, text delivery and dramatic arc of these five songs.
Singerpreneur
By Lauri D. Goldenhersh
(concert review of Palm Trees)
After readings by the two poets came the world premiere of The Palm Trees Are Restless, a very L.A.-centric song cycle by Mark Abel, with texts by Red Hen chief Kate Gale, both in attendance.
These visions of our landscape are evocative and surprising, laying bare emotions not usually associated with the polite classical salon. While the poems lean heavily on iconic images of Los Angeles, they are not merely strung-together litanies of sunshine, palm trees, cool cars, thin bodies and blondness. These outwardly identifiable facets are veils to the parts of being an Angeleno that must be lived in order to be fully felt: particularly the striving, the frustration, and the fear of being invisible that are so palpable to many residents of this otherwise beautiful place.
Abel’s music places the emphasis firmly on storytelling, and he uses the piano more as landscape and scene-setting, keeping the voice center stage. But those stories are rich and tactile, with music that delivers. This set would prove a significant vocal and dramatic challenge to most performers, however, requiring the artistic prowess of performers like (Plitmann and Tadmor) to make these stories truly speak.
Opera Nederland
For the cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, Abel composed five beautifully melancholic songs on the original texts of Kate Gale. Soprano Hila Plitmann -- the muse of many American composers, including Corigliano, Danielpour, Del Tredici and Kernis -- sings with great character, and pianist Tali Tadmor assists with inspiration.
Opera Lively
By Luiz Gazzola
Please follow the link here for a lengthy interview/review package on the "Home Is a Harbor" double CD.
By Donald Rosenberg
The two works receiving their premiere recordings on this disc show American composer Mark Abel to have an affinity for vocal settings in diverse contexts. Home Is a Harbor is his first opera, while The Palm Trees Are Restless gives striking musical life to five poems by Kate Gale.
In both pieces, Abel employs a colorful blend of styles … (that) serve the emotional nature of each work to bracing and poignant effect. The opera traces the odyssey of twin sisters in California who set out as idealists and learn the challenging ways of the world. The moral is a 21st-century variation on “there’s no place like home.”
All of the characters in Home Is a Harbor (are) connected by circumstances that bring them together, pull them apart and, at the end, bind them. Abel’s lucid narrative and vibrant vocal lines, combined with telling orchestrations for a chamber ensemble, make the work an affecting experience. The cast is strong and Benjamin Makino conducts the La Brea Sinfonietta in a vivid performance.
… The song cycle eschews idealism for hard realities of life. The verses are bursts of feeling that Abel sets to vocal lines of strenuous extremes. The brilliant soprano Hila Plitmann manages every leap and switch of emotional gears with fearless commitment, and pianist Tali Tadmor matches her in power and subtlety.
Opera News
By Joshua Rosenblum
Mark Abel (b. 1948) has devoted most of his composing career to writing song cycles, including those represented on two previous Delos releases. The current disc is a recording of his first opera, Home is a Harbor. Abel spent some formative years as a rock musician, and he has a knack for integrating catchy, interesting grooves into a comfortably tonal but frequently creative classical style. The composer wrote what is essentially a prose libretto for his opera, which could have led to some meandering in the score, but the rock and jazz elements help to provide form and structure.
Abel’s decidedly contemporary story has potential: Lisa and Laurie, twin sisters from California’s central coast, set out on their respective paths in the world — one as an artist in Brooklyn, the other as a banker in Irvine, California. Both encounter shallowness and professional disillusionment, return home and vow to do some good in the world, specifically by creating an organization to help homeless veterans. The characters are realistic and the situations are relevant ... . The libretto is firmly in the vernacular (“Awesome dinner, mom. Hey, Lisa, let’s hit the beach before the sun goes down”) … (and) the music is unfailingly pleasant (except for one deliberately bad pop song heard in a club) … .
The singers, led by sopranos Jamie Chamberlin and Ariel Pisturino, are particularly well perched along the spectrum between opera and musical theater, which makes them perfectly suited to this crossover piece. All the vocals land with immediacy. Among the other gifted cast members are baritone Babatunde Akinboboye, as Laurie’s ill-fated boyfriend Lance; baritone E. Scott Levin, as Laurie’s creepy, amoral boss; and bass Carver Cossey, who creates a vivid portrait of Lou, an elderly poet. Janelle DeStefano demonstrates versatility playing both the twins’ warmhearted mother and Lisa’s cynical, inflexible SoHo art dealer. Nimble tenor Jon Lee Keenan is amusingly superficial as Lisa’s all-talk-and-no-action slacker boyfriend. The instrumentalists of the La Brea Sinfonietta under Benjamin Makino do exceptionally well with Abel’s hybrid style, which includes imaginative use of electric organ.
The disc also contains a cycle for piano and voice called The Palm Trees Are Restless, settings of five poems by Kate Gale. (Abel) provides empathetic musical illumination of Gale’s personal, expressive poetry, and is attentive to the melodic contours implied by her phrases. The best song is the Weill-esque “Crater Light,” which depicts a frank barroom encounter and a divorce over sexual incompatibility. The always-impressive Hila Plitmann, a specialist in contemporary art song, sings with a plush, enveloping tone and amazingly clear diction all the way to the top of her range. Pianist Tali Tadmor is her adept and sensitive partner.
Fanfare Magazine
By Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold
(Mark Abel's opera) Home Is a Harbor ... is a compelling musical theater piece which combines classical and modern musical elements with contemporary dramatic situations.
Harbor is a coming of age story about two twin sisters from Morro Bay, Ca., who set out after high school to find their way in what Abel calls “the swifter currents of the real world.” After experiencing the first flush of artistic and business success and romance, both girls begin to feel at odds with the values of the worlds in which they have immersed themselves. Amid the swirling chaos of a war in Afghanistan and the all-too-blatant visage of poverty and homelessness in America, the sisters return to Morro Bay in search of the meaning that has eluded them in New York and Irvine.
Abel has penned his own libretto, and his prose, for all its sparseness, is literate and eloquent. His use of contemporary diction, when first seen only on the page, might seem a barrier to melodic vocal line, but Abel amazes with his compact setting of the text that has a directness and elegance of its own. ... The condensing of events adds to the operatic Angst. Altogether, the opera moves with the briskness of successive snapshots, lingering only at the end to settle into and impart its wisdom.
... Abel’s writing for the voice is fluid, melodic, and at the same time natural, especially as it weaves Sprechstimme in and out of traditionally sung lines. There are some memorable set pieces, such as Lisa’s soliloquy which begins act II, Laurie’s aria “Help Me” which concludes it, and the sisters’ gentle duet at the finale. There are orchestral interludes of great beauty as well, such as the opera’s Prelude with its jazzy elements and moody melancholy, and the evocation of the rain, the birds, and the harbor at the end. Abel also knows how to extract remarkable color from the small orchestra, using the woodwinds, organ, and celesta and vibraphone to great effect and evoking unusual sounds such as the chime of cell phones or the delicate tinkling of rain.
The cast is uniformly strong and adept at contemporary music. Sopranos Jamie Chamberlin as Lisa and Ariel Pisturino as Laurie possess clear, secure voices which complement each other, Pisturino’s being the darker colored. Babatunde Akinboboye contributes a rich baritone to the role of Lance, while baritone E. Scott Levin gives a slippery edge to Liam and tenor Jon Lee Keenan gives Larry a slick presence. Janelle DeStefano uses her warm mezzo to great textual effect as Lenore, and Carver Cossey’s smoky bass conjures up the aging poet. The La Brea Sinfonietta under Benjamin Makino plays with great sensitivity.
The accompanying work ... is Abel’s setting of five poems by Kate Gale, The Palm Trees Are Restless. Sung hauntingly by Israeli soprano Hila Plitmann, partnered by the excellent Tali Tadmor on piano, this cycle explores contrasting scenes and emotions: a tender sexual encounter with the bleak barrenness of Los Angeles, a candid bar room conversation and a monologue groping for memories of an absent sister, and finally the bitter revelations swirling around a divorce—all born from the pain of the human experience. Abel embraces these contrasts fluidly, moving from jaunty Brechtian utterances, to evocative tone painting for the piano, to spiky staccato and lilting melody. In Plitmann, he has a singer whose clear bell-like soprano has a distinctive capacity for both dramatic and subtle colors, as well as impeccable diction, and she vividly inhabits the changing landscape of the cycle.
These two new works by Mark Abel come highly recommended for all enthusiasts of contemporary music, and for those who believe firmly that opera and art song are NOT dying arts, here is tangible proof.
Read Fanfare's interview with Mark here
American Record Guide
By Richard Sininger
American composer Mark Abel has written several song cycles. This recording contains his most recent cycle, The Palm Trees Are Restless; but more important, perhaps, it contains his first opera, Home Is a Harbor. Looking over the cast bios, one is struck by the fact that nearly all the participants are California-based, making the point very clearly that that large Western state has become an important cultural hub in the country, and Mr. Abel is at the forefront of its musical life.
The opera deals with young twin sisters who set out on their post-high school lives in different directions, one as an art student who goes to NYU and the other who stays near home to attend college and wait for her soldier boyfriend. Both find disillusionment and sadness, only to return home in a third act which offers hope for the future, if from a slightly unbelievable (because it’s too good) situation. But even the ultra-optimistic ending does not destroy the effectiveness of the piece. It is short but filled with characters and situations that remind us all too well of the realities of our world.
Musically it is something of a pop opera, with a style full of hints of jazz and pop music. The voices are all operatically trained, but the orchestra’s instrumentation comprises mostly winds, percussion, piano and organ, with few strings. It comes across as a very modern accompaniment, but not at all unpleasant. The La Brea Sinfonietta, under Benjamin Makino, plays the score expertly.
All the singers do a fine job; I would not be surprised to read some of their names on the rosters of major opera companies. The two sopranos who sing the twins Lisa and Laurie, Jamie Chamberlin and Ariel Pisturino, create very believable young women with their well-supported sopranos. Best of the lot is Babatunde Akinboboye, whose rich baritone demands special notice from the listener. Most of the others have more than one role, and they create a slightly different sound for each character. As with many modern operas, the vocal line is not typical of romantic opera. But it is tonal and effective in conveying the drama of the situation.
The program ends with Mr. Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, where he sets five poems by Kate Gale. I find the poems fascinating reading ... . Mr. Abel’s music for them (is) performed very well by soprano Hila Plitmann, accompanied by Tali Tadmor at the piano.
Fanfare Magazine
By Maria Nockin
Having had a major critical success with his song cycle The Dream Gallery, Mark Abel has written his first opera, Home Is a Harbor. The three-act piece has not yet been staged (but) I am in hopes of seeing it performed because its exquisite score cries out for the addition of visual creativity.
The opera tells of twin sisters Lisa and Laurie, who have grown up in Central California’s bucolic, lightly populated seaside community of Morro Bay. Both sisters are sung by sopranos with excellent diction but different timbres. As Lisa, Jamie Chamberlin’s sound is shiny silver while Ariel Pisturino sings Laurie with warmth and the resonance of an oboe. A painter, Lisa leaves for college in New York City where she meets Larry, sung passionately by tenor Jon Lee Keenan. Laurie, who loves her life in California, begins attending school there.
Baritone Babatunde Akinboboye sings Laurie’s boyfriend, Lance, with a strong, virile voice. Lance joins the military to get money for college, but he returns severely injured. Lisa, too, comes back to California after having become disenchanted with the art world. In the final scene, the reunited twins begin to plan a community center that will serve homeless veterans.
Some of the most impressive music in the opera is not vocal. In the tradition of composers like Benjamin Britten, Abel’s most enchanting music describes the mysteries of the sea, its mists and its moods. The libretto is replete with current speech and shows the use of current technology such as texting at the dinner table, but it also incorporates short melodic numbers in arioso style and beautifully harmonized duets. The orchestral forces of the La Brea Sinfonietta under the direction of Benjamin Makino are small but potent. Abel’s use of organ, woodwinds, and percussion to provide musical colors is most ingenious.
The second work on the disc is Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless. The five dark poems by Kate Gale -- The Storm Drain, Los Angeles, Crater Light, Shura and The Great Divorce -- tell tales of disenfranchisement and loneliness among the crowds of an enormous city.
Grammy winner Hila Plitmann and virtuoso pianist Tali Tadmor bring cool, silver-clad sounds to The Storm Drain, a rhythmic pulse to Los Angeles, folk-like melodies to Crater Light, the pathos of a plaintive lament to Shura, along with spiky rhythms and dramatic punch to The Great Divorce. Gale’s throngs keep looking past each other. “That’s the problem with most people. They don’t actually see you,” she writes.
Abel’s musical setting echoes the melodic beauty of Les Six as he weaves a colorful tapestry around Gale’s poetic descriptions of the sadder side of life on the West Coast. This Delos recording has clear, pristine sound. I think opera enthusiasts and fans of new music will want to own this two-disc set.
CultureSpot LA
By David Maurer
“Art music” is a coded phrase for music that most people would consider strange, offbeat or eccentric. Mark Abel’s first opera, Home Is a Harbor, is all those things, but in a good way, mostly. This California-based composer has a unique sound that blends many influences and musical genres and offers an inventive vision of what a modern opera can be.
Abel has presented his vocal art music on two previous Delos releases, The Dream Gallery and Terrain of the Heart, but this is his most fully realized work. And he’s come the long way ’round to wind up here. As a young man, Abel was a rock musician. That led to a period of immersion in jazz improvisation, before putting music to the side as he pursued a career in journalism. Finally, the muse called him back to create a new kind of music that combines all of these previous influences, draped upon a classical framework.
As both composer and librettist, Abel offers a highly personal vision of the things that matter most to him. In music and words, he provides a map of sorts that lays out both the dysfunctional externalities of modern American urban life as well as the internal struggle to transcend those harsh realities to find beauty and meaning. Home Is a Harbor begins and ends in Morro Bay, a place of sanctity and calm that, not coincidentally, happens to be close to Abel’s home in Central California.
The story takes place between the years 2005 and 2011 and involves twin sisters who are on the verge of adulthood. Lisa (sung by Jamie Chamberlin) is a painter leaving home to attend NYU. In New York, she soon finds commercial success with her seascapes, but also is disheartened by the shallowness of trend followers and by the pressures put upon her to keep the dollars rolling in. Laurie (sung by Ariel Pisturino) is “a people person” and goes to a small local college before being bamboozled to sell reverse mortgages under the guise of helping people, until the 2007 housing collapse opens her eyes to the true nature of her job. Both women return to Morro Bay at the end, committed to helping those who are hurting most.
It’s amusing — not to mention somewhat jarring — to hear modern argot sung, sometimes spoken, in an opera. And there’s plenty of it here: the libretto is sprinkled with phrases like “chill out,” “what’s up?,” “go with the flow,” “get a grip,” etc., as well as a liberal smattering of proper nouns like Prius, The O.C. and even Rudy Giuliani that indicate place and time.
The two female leads are competent, but sound quite similar and without following the libretto, it can get confusing as to who is who. … I thought the male singers, especially baritone Babatunde Akinboboye (who sings the role of Lance, Laurie’s boyfriend), were overall more compelling.
Of course, as in any opera, the music is the ne plus ultra — the foundation upon which everything else rests. Happily, Abel presents a panoply of sounds, moods, textures and ideas that make listening to this well-recorded disc worthwhile. He brings an organ into the mix, from which he variously coaxes church sounds and rock sounds or mirrors the double bass. There are moments of humor as well, such as when Lisa visits a club and encounters a snatch of Madonna-like synth pop while waiting to hear a comically bad female singer known as The Yowler. The orchestra, La Brea Sinfonietta conducted by Benjamin Makino, features primarily woodwinds, some horns, as well as three percussionists. Notably, there are no violins used at all.
Let us hope that Abel finds a way to get this opera produced in Los Angeles, because with the right director it could be a terrific show.
As a bonus on disc two, Abel has set to music five poems of Los Angeles-based poet Kate Gale. The Palm Trees Are Restless is simply piano (Tali Tadmor) and voice (soprano Hila Plitmann) and overall conforms most closely to what most people would consider “art music.” Most of the poems are pretty dark, expressing a bleak landscape of bitter, scarred women ruminating on loss, perfidy and meaninglessness. Worth a listen … .
KZSU-FM, Stanford University
By Larry Koran
Composer Mark Abel was a 1960s student at Stanford who later became foreign editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. His first opera, Home Is a Harbor, successfully combines the expressive depth of classical music, the in-your-face impact of rock (he was once a rock musician) and the free-flowing and quasi-improvisatory nature of jazz.
The easy-to-listen-to and engaging music, featuring standout performances by young vocalists, is scored for the 13-player La Brea Sinfonietta, and includes an organ. The story follows twin sisters from Morro Bay on California’s bucolic Central Coast as they enter thorny career paths in Manhattan and Southern California. Early success, followed by the financial crisis of 2008/9, the human cost of the Afghanistan war and the emptiness of some of their peers, leads to decisions to return to more meaningful and moral lives in Morro Bay. Abel’s libretto covers a wide emotional landscape (youthful exuberance, tragedy, pathos, disillusion, humor) with satire and social commentary alongside.
The recording includes Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, which sets five Kate Gale poems to music for soprano and piano. Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann sings beautifully. Again, the listening is easy, and the emotional range wide.
Journal of Singing
By Gregory Berg
(Home Is a Harbor is) the first opera of Mark Abel, a skilled and assured composer of songs. … It is a coming-of-age story for two sisters who venture out from the relative safety and comfort of their small hometown to seek success in two different cities. By the time we’re done, we’ve touched on such issues as homelessness, the war in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, graft in the art world, and the angst and alienation of life in modern America.
The best thing about the work is its intriguing and colorful accompaniment, which is scored for small chamber orchestra. Abel obviously knows something about combining instrumental colors in arresting ways. It leaves one very hungry to hear more of this sort of thing from him. The best passages from this opera, such as its atmospheric prelude or the radiant duet sung by the sisters to close the work, point to Abel’s potential as an opera composer … .
The Palm Trees Are Restless is a setting of five poems by Los Angeles writer Kate Gale, one of the most gifted poets before the public today. The texts are a discerning reflection on modern life, and they seem to have inspired Abel to the summit of his powers. These are complex poems replete with sharply shifting moods and flavors, and in the hands of a lesser composer we could have been left with a chaotic jumble. Abel has found a way to harness and embrace the restless energy of these texts with masterful assurance and ingenuity.
The set opens with what is surely the loveliest song ever written about a storm drain, and it treats us to the composer’s unerring ear for color. It’s followed by “Los Angeles,” a lengthy and complicated text that captures the unique and endlessly varied character of the city, its inhabitants, and what life is like there. Gale’s text is a gauntlet of wildly divergent experiences and emotions, and Abel’s music brings it all thrillingly to life.
“Crater Light” is a sardonic expression of what it feels like to be abandoned by one’s lover; the title refers to how someone nursing such hurt is likely to view even something as lovely as moonlight as nothing but an aching reminder of the pleasures that someone else is enjoying. “Shura” is a song of haunting and mysterious beauty that also demonstrates the profound impact one can achieve by blending contrasting textures in telling ways. The set ends with quite a bang, courtesy of a hectoring song titled “The Great Divorce” that literally gives us one side of an angry conversation, as though we were eavesdropping as someone engaged in a furious phone call. Gale’s text is powerful in and of itself, but with Abel’s musical setting it gains even more visceral impact.
Fortunately for Abel, he has a soprano who manages to cope with (the cycle’s) punishing tessitura with surprising success. Hila Plitmann is to be commended for her exciting and expressive singing, and Tali Tadmor partners her at the piano with impressive aplomb.
Journal of Singing
By Kathleen Roland-Silverstein
(excerpt from analysis of the score)
Mark Abel is a California-based composer with an already impressive body of vocal work … . With The Palm Trees Are Restless, Abel has set the haunting and very sensual lyrics of Los Angeles poet Kate Gale to great effect. Premiered by Grammy-award winning soprano Hila Plitmann, Palm Trees is an excellent choice for a soprano voice able to negotiate the demanding tessitura, text delivery and dramatic arc of these five songs.
Singerpreneur
By Lauri D. Goldenhersh
(concert review of Palm Trees)
After readings by the two poets came the world premiere of The Palm Trees Are Restless, a very L.A.-centric song cycle by Mark Abel, with texts by Red Hen chief Kate Gale, both in attendance.
These visions of our landscape are evocative and surprising, laying bare emotions not usually associated with the polite classical salon. While the poems lean heavily on iconic images of Los Angeles, they are not merely strung-together litanies of sunshine, palm trees, cool cars, thin bodies and blondness. These outwardly identifiable facets are veils to the parts of being an Angeleno that must be lived in order to be fully felt: particularly the striving, the frustration, and the fear of being invisible that are so palpable to many residents of this otherwise beautiful place.
Abel’s music places the emphasis firmly on storytelling, and he uses the piano more as landscape and scene-setting, keeping the voice center stage. But those stories are rich and tactile, with music that delivers. This set would prove a significant vocal and dramatic challenge to most performers, however, requiring the artistic prowess of performers like (Plitmann and Tadmor) to make these stories truly speak.
Opera Nederland
For the cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless, Abel composed five beautifully melancholic songs on the original texts of Kate Gale. Soprano Hila Plitmann -- the muse of many American composers, including Corigliano, Danielpour, Del Tredici and Kernis -- sings with great character, and pianist Tali Tadmor assists with inspiration.
Opera Lively
By Luiz Gazzola
Please follow the link here for a lengthy interview/review package on the "Home Is a Harbor" double CD.
Praise for "Terrain of the Heart"
Journal of Singing Gregory Berg
Opera News Joanne Sydney Lessner
Classical-Modern Music Review Grego Applegate Edwards
Fanfare Magazine Colin Clarke and Maria Nockin
Pictures on Silence Don Clark
Allmusic.com James Manheim
Infodad.com Mark J. Estren
Classical Candor John J. Puccio
KZSU-FM, Stanford University Larry Koran
Opera News Joanne Sydney Lessner
Classical-Modern Music Review Grego Applegate Edwards
Fanfare Magazine Colin Clarke and Maria Nockin
Pictures on Silence Don Clark
Allmusic.com James Manheim
Infodad.com Mark J. Estren
Classical Candor John J. Puccio
KZSU-FM, Stanford University Larry Koran
Praise for "The Dream Gallery"
Short Takes Multiple Authors
Fanfare Magazine Maria Nockin
Classical-Modern Music Review Grego Applegate Edwards
ConcertoNet.com Micaele Sparacino
Classical Candor John J. Puccio
Allmusic.com James Manheim
KZSU-FM, Stanford University Larry Koran
San Diego Troubadour Frank Kocher
Beacon Media (San Gabriel Valley, Ca.) Bill Peters
Le Ben Franklin Post (Paris) Isabelle Boucq
Richmond Confidential (Richmond, Ca.)
By Lexi Pandell
The song opens with the ominous, resonating notes of a piano and the gentle strokes of a harp. A deep bass voice croons, "Smell of chemicals hangs in the air above the Iron Triangle. Some things never change, and I've been here 70 years now."
Thus begins the fifth song on composer Mark Abel's new "alternative classical" album The Dream Gallery, released on the classical music label Delos Productions. The collection features seven songs about seven different California cities, including Richmond.
While the pieces based on Berkeley and San Diego serve as satire of common attitudes held by locals, the others include more serious discussions of everything from the economic devastation in Taft and immigration in Soledad to superficiality in Los Angeles and youth culture in Arcata.
Read more here
North County Times (Escondido, Ca.)
By Jim Trageser
Mark Abel never set out to be the next Brahms or Sibelius.
And yet, 15 years of playing in a string of rock bands in New York City and a quarter-century as a newspaper reporter and editor in San Francisco somehow led him to now living in La Costa and composing classical music.
Abel has just released his third album, The Dream Gallery: Seven California Portraits, which he said continues his push to marry complex traditional classical forms with structures drawn from rock.
"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.
Read more here
La Jolla Light (San Diego)
By Jenna Jay
California stereotypes might vary by latitude, but several cities' cultural and societal labels from around the Golden State unfold in the classical song cycle The Dream Gallery: Seven California Portraits.
The latest release from local composer Mark Abel, The Dream Gallery (69 minutes) features seven extended tracks that convey (and even satirize) quintessential Californians varying by region.
"Art is a mirror on life and society," Abel said. "I felt that California was a sufficiently fascinating place that would make a good piece of art, so to speak, by going up and down the state and depicting its people."
Read more here