Only Heaven: Medium High Voice (P/V/G Composer Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)April 30, 2002

MUSIC REVIEW | RICKY IAN GORDON

Composer's Happy Leap Into the Beauty of Poetry
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Sex, longing and loss: Those are the words the composer Ricky Ian Gordon chose to describe the underlying themes of his music in an interview with the playwright Richard Nelson on Sunday evening at the Peter B. Lewis Theater in the Guggenheim Museum. But the composer's self-definition -- which came at the midpoint of a concert of his songs featuring the singers Audra McDonald, Theresa McCarthy, Darius de Haas and Lewis Cleale -- tells only part of the story.

Mr. Gordon's settings of Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay and other poets dance freely across the line between a sophisticated post-Sondheim Broadway style and strait-laced art song. He writes extremely singer-friendly music that conveys the happy-sad mood swings of an open-hearted child. As the singers performed more than 20 of Mr. Gordon's songs, the majority arranged by the composer for a 10-member ensemble conducted by Ted Sperling, the music bubbled and cascaded like a mountain brook after a spring rain. Over and over, one had the image of a boy skipping ecstatically through fields and woods on a crisp April morning.

Mr. Gordon's love of poetry is evident from the clarity and ease of flow of settings that rarely allow a word to get lost. Whether giving musical voice to Hughes's urban angst or to Parker's cynicism, the composer instinctively looks for the silver lining. He turns despair into sadness and softens bitter into wry. Several of his settings of Hughes's poems are inflected with Jazz Age flavors that suggest the blues, but as played by a jazz band at a Champagne reception on an ocean liner.

His setting of Parker's "Red Dress," about a girl's yearning for a symbolic gown and the letdown of finally possessing it, focuses on the starry-eyed girl, not the grown-up cynic. With music added, Marie Howe's portrait of grief, "What the Living Do" (sung by Ms. McCarthy with a touching naturalness), became a lesson on how to live in the moment.

The program, which was repeated last night, was astutely cast. Mr. de Haas's bursting enthusiasm elevated "Heaven," a Hughes fantasy of the hereafter, into pure euphoria, while Ms. McDonald, in excellent voice, beautifully balanced the bleakness and hope of two Hughes poems put together: "Poor Girls Ruination" and "The Dream Keeper." Mr. Cleale found the heroic heart of "We Will Always Walk Together," a romantic hymn celebrating a friendship that transcends death, from the show "Dream True."

Sex, longing and loss? Yes, you could feel them, but they were undercurrents in a concert whose overriding mood was one of joy.Bright Eyed Joy: The Songs of Ricky Ian Gordon

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Product Description:
Settings of 17 poems by Langston Hughes. Contents: Angel Wings * Daybreak in Alabama * Delinquent * Demand * Dream * Dream Variations * Drum * Harlem Night Song * In Time of Silver Rain * Late Last Night * Litany Luck * Night: Four Songs * Port Town * Song for a Dark Girl * Stars * When Sue Wears Red.

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A Horse with Wings: Medium High Voice (P/V/G Composer Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)April 30, 2002

MUSIC REVIEW | RICKY IAN GORDON

Composer's Happy Leap Into the Beauty of Poetry

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Bright Eyed Joy: The Songs of Ricky Ian GordonSex, longing and loss: Those are the words the composer Ricky Ian Gordon chose to describe the underlying themes of his music in an interview with the playwright Richard Nelson on Sunday evening at the Peter B. Lewis Theater in the Guggenheim Museum. But the composer's self-definition -- which came at the midpoint of a concert of his songs featuring the singers Audra McDonald, Theresa McCarthy, Darius de Haas and Lewis Cleale -- tells only part of the story.

Mr. Gordon's settings of Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay and other poets dance freely across the line between a sophisticated post-Sondheim Broadway style and strait-laced art song. He writes extremely singer-friendly music that conveys the happy-sad mood swings of an open-hearted child. As the singers performed more than 20 of Mr. Gordon's songs, the majority arranged by the composer for a 10-member ensemble conducted by Ted Sperling, the music bubbled and cascaded like a mountain brook after a spring rain. Over and over, one had the image of a boy skipping ecstatically through fields and woods on a crisp April morning.

Mr. Gordon's love of poetry is evident from the clarity and ease of flow of settings that rarely allow a word to get lost. Whether giving musical voice to Hughes's urban angst or to Parker's cynicism, the composer instinctively looks for the silver lining. He turns despair into sadness and softens bitter into wry. Several of his settings of Hughes's poems are inflected with Jazz Age flavors that suggest the blues, but as played by a jazz band at a Champagne reception on an ocean liner.

His setting of Parker's "Red Dress," about a girl's yearning for a symbolic gown and the letdown of finally possessing it, focuses on the starry-eyed girl, not the grown-up cynic. With music added, Marie Howe's portrait of grief, "What the Living Do" (sung by Ms. McCarthy with a touching naturalness), became a lesson on how to live in the moment.

The program, which was repeated last night, was astutely cast. Mr. de Haas's bursting enthusiasm elevated "Heaven," a Hughes fantasy of the hereafter, into pure euphoria, while Ms. McDonald, in excellent voice, beautifully balanced the bleakness and hope of two Hughes poems put together: "Poor Girls Ruination" and "The Dream Keeper." Mr. Cleale found the heroic heart of "We Will Always Walk Together," a romantic hymn celebrating a friendship that transcends death, from the show "Dream True."

Sex, longing and loss? Yes, you could feel them, but they were undercurrents in a concert whose overriding mood was one of joy.

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Product Description:
Collection of 21 songs, including interesting notes about each from the composer. Contents: Afternoon on a Hill * Air * An Old Fashioned Song * Coyotes * Fewer Words * A Horse With Wings * I Am Cherry Alive * Janet Underneath the Roses * The Lake Isle Of Innisfree * My Sister's New Red Hat * Once I Was * Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) * The Red Dress * Souvenir * Sweet Song * Sycamore Trees * The Special Picnic * The Spring and the Fall * What Shall We Remember? * White Haired Woman * Will There Really Be a Morning?

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My Life with Albertine (Vocal Score) Review

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(More customer reviews)My Life With Albertine
Exquisite. Gordon's contemplative score often recalls salon music of the 1920s. Piano notes fall like teardrops. Throbbing cello and violin lines suggest quickening of breath. A sensual 'Sometimes' and a yearning 'But What I Say' are highlights among the 16 songs and extensive underscoring given dark, gleaming orchestration by Bruce Coughlin.

Michael Sommers, The Star-Ledger

The melodies stick with you long afterwards...two unmistakable gems in 'Talk About the Weather' and Ms. O'Hara's wistful finale, 'If It Is True.'-

Jeremy McCarter, The New York Sun

The music swirls with regret, romance, and a sense of lost time.

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Gordon writes beautiful music.
About a year ago the composer/lyricist's life intersected again with CMU's College of Fine Arts . The 1980 grad was there because his life had such significance that he received an alumnus award. Other theatre alums came too, Ted Danson and Rob Marshall. But you probably know Gordon's name less.
He's got major credits, especially for vocal music, operas, operettas and song collections involving such artists as Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw and Audra McDonald. And he often gravitates to setting poetry.
Back in 2002 he wrote a musical featuring poetry by Langston Hughes, Only Heaven (likewise on ps classics.) It played way off-Broadway, Dayton , Ohio . Last year this show opened in New York 's actual off-Broadway but ran for less than a month. Thank goodness both scores can be heard by all of us. Each is worth the visit.
Again, as with Hughes, an eloquent word-artist is evoked, Marcel Proust. My Life with Albertine evokes his Albertine Disparue from 1925. Within the setting of Paris 1919, the score has the delicacy and grace you'd expect for the source, the period, the place. Impressions of Debussy, Satie and Poulenc waft through the gentle air. Fragrances of waltzes, polkas, schottisches come and go. So too do suggestions of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. Bien sur.
The 12 member cast includes Brent Carver, best known as multi-award winner for his role in Kander and Ebb's Kiss of the Spider Woman. Actually the cast outnumbers the instrumental ensemble's seven pieces. But the collective sound has the perfect, impeccable, discreet resonance that belongs with such a work.
Perhaps it was too fragile for sensation-seeking New York audiences. At home, if you listen by candlelight savoring wine and perhaps a madeleine, you'll savor many degrees of taste.

Gordon Spencer,Pittsburgh Magazine

Review by David Hurst

Last March, Playwrights Horizons took a bold chance with a small chamber musical called My Life With Albertine with book and lyrics by Richard Nelson and a score by Ricky Ian Gordon. Based on the Albertine sections of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, it was clearly going to be a hard sell and, indeed, it struggled to find an audience receiving mixed to negative reviews even though it boasted a stellar cast that included Brent Carver, Kelli O'Hara, Chad Kimball, Donna Lynne Champlin and Emily Skinner. Wisely, PS Classics preserved Gordon's lush and haunting score with the resulting recording revealing gorgeous melodies and astonishing singing. Granted, it's not a conventional musical and it takes a little work to fully invest yourself in Gordon's music but it's worth the effort and smaller, regional companies will undoubtedly stage their own productions thanks to PS Classics exceptional disc.

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Product Description:
Based on incidents in Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, this musical was written by the contemporary Broadway team of Ricky Ian Gordon and Richard Nelson. This folio features the vocal score to all 23 pieces. Includes: But What I Say Is... * If It Is True * Is It Too Late? (Albertine's Last Letter) * My Soul Weeps * Sometimes * and more.

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Genius Child: High Voice (Composer Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)Once again Ricky Ian Gordon has won with the song cycle Genius Child. I just wish I could meet and really talk to him about where his music emerges from within him. Outstanding! My favorite piece starts off about a girl dreaming of a piano and the stepwise motion in the accompaniment is so on point.

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Ricky Ian Gordon is a very talented modern composer whose compositions have been performed worldwide. He is equally at home writing for the concert hall, opera, dance, theatre and film. This collection is a cycle of ten songs for voice and piano using poems by Langston Hughes. Includes: Border Line * Joy * Kid In The Park * My People * Prayer * Winter Moon * and more.

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Finding Home - The Songs of Ricky Ian Gordon (P/V/G Composer Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)Mar 15, 2001

Bright Eyed Joy: The Music of Ricky Ian Gordon

Reviewed By: Michael Portantiere

A Horse with Wings: Medium High VoiceAnyone who believes the canard that the work of contemporary musical theater composers is generally lacking in melody should have been at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday, March 13 for that evening's celebration of the music of Ricky Ian Gordon. This fellow is famous as one of the "three-named composers" (see also Jason Robert Brown and Michael John LaChiusa) who are either the hope or the bane of this great American art form, depending on one's taste. As a whole, the group has somehow developed a reputation for being unwilling or unable to write hummable tunes; but that's sheer nonsense, as Bright Eyed Joy: The Music of Ricky Ian Gordon proved beyond a doubt.

Yes, there are elements of minimalism in some of Gordon's songs. You'll find a greater use of dissonance, certainly, than in a typical tune by Richard Rodgers or Cole Porter. And Gordon's melodic structures are sometimes so complex that musically unsophisticated audience members might not be able to hum them at intermission. On the other hand, the composer also embraces fairly simple, non-intimidating melodic threads that can be easily grasped and enjoyed by people who have had not a whit of musical education or training.

At Tully Hall, the best possible case was made for Gordon's oeuvre by a cast of musical theater, opera, and concert singers that one might hope to encounter only in one's wildest, most satisfying dreams. Kristin Chenoweth, returning to the New York stage after a hiatus spent largely on the West Coast, was an audience favorite as she soloed on two songs dating from 1999: "Just an Ordinary Guy" (lyrics by Langston Hughes and Gordon) and "Run Away" (lyrics by Gordon). She also duetted delightfully with Judy Blazer (fabulous!) on "I Love Electro" from Sitting on the Edge of the Future (lyrics: Bill Solly), in which two women kvell over a robot butler played on this occasion by Gordon himself; and Chenoweth's gleaming soprano shone in the ensemble finales of Act One (the glorious "Travel Quintet" from States of Independence, lyrics by Tina Landau) and Act Two ("Joy" from Genius Child/Only Heaven, lyrics by Langston Hughes).

But the talent bar was set so high for the evening that, believe it or not, Chenoweth didn't steal the show. Brian d'Arcy James, on a night off from Conor McPherson's The Good Thief, displayed gorgeous vocal tone and unlimited charisma in the world premiere of the title song from Shimmer (a new musical based on the novel by Sarah Schulman, with lyrics by Michael Korie) and in a duet with the magnetic Billy Porter on another title song, this from the flawed but unforgettable Dream True (lyrics: Tina Landau). Adam Guettel--who really has no right to sing and/or look the way he does, given his own brilliant talents as a composer/lyricist--showed in "We Will Always Walk Together" from Dream True that he could have a great career as a performer if (God forbid!) he ever chooses to throw aside his pen and his music paper.

A measure of Gordon's wonderful eclecticism is the fact that the classical/opera singers on hand for the concert--Camellia Johnson, Monique McDonald, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Chris Pedro Trakas--seemed as much at home as the musical theater folks. Johnson and McDonald really cooked in their "Summer" duet (lyrics by Gordon), and the latter diva topped one of the ensembles with a high note so powerful and pure that I thought the roof of Tully Hall might blast right up into the innards of the Juilliard School.

One of the best ideas of the concert, directed by Gabriel Barre, was to have the magnificent actress Cherry Jones read verses by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, W.S. Merwin, and Jane Kenyon immediately before Gordon's respectful yet highly original settings of those poems were performed. Particular highlights among these selections were Millay's "Souvenir" (sung by Lieberson) and Merwin's "Otherwise" (sung by Guettel).

A 10-piece orchestra played beautifully throughout under music director Ted Sperling. The performers were sensibly miked, thanks to sound designer Scott Stauffer. The glittery audience (I spotted Terrence McNally, Michael Mayer, and Andrew Lippa, among others) loved every minute of the concert, as well they should have. It's a pity that more of Gordon's music hasn't yet been recorded; this reviewer, for one, will be sure to snap up anything that's issued, posthaste.

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Product Description:
Ricky Ian Gordon has been called "one of the leading younger composers of songs" by The New York Times. He has written for the concert hall, opera, dance, theater and film. His works have been performed by world-renowned singers and have won numerous accolades and awards. This folio presents 21 of his finest, along with a biography of Gordon's prestigious career and his own background notes for each piece. Titles include: Heaven * Blessing the Boats * Poor Girl's Ruination/The Dream Keeper * Run Away * Otherwise * Summer * Love Song for Lucinda * Open All Night * Just an Ordinary Guy * My Mother Is a Singer * Bus Stop * Home of the Brave * and more.

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