Lori Laitman: Becoming a Redwood
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Music CD Cover
Performer: Lee PoulisPerformer: Randall Scarlata
Performer: William Sharp
Performer: Gary Poster
Performer: Marcy Rosen
Performer: Thomas Kraines
Composer: Lori Laitman
Performer: Patricia Green
Performer: Kirsten Taylor
Performer: Lori Laitman
Performer: Warren Jones
Performer: Barbara Quintiliani
Performer: Jennifer Check
Performer: Sari Gruber
Performer: Robert Mcpherson
Performer: Juliette Kang
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-10-24
Music Label: Albany Records
Soundtracks:
- Last Night The Rain Spoke To Me
- Blue Iris
- Early Snow
- Mascot and Symbol
- Stella Remembered
- A Letter To My Daughter
- Cradle Song for Asher
- The Ancestor
- Redknots
- The Breather
- The Throwback
- The Song (after Rilke)
- Pentecost
- Curriculum Vitae
- Becoming A Redwood
- I Looked for Reasons
- The Pond Seems Smaller
- Late in the Day
- Days Turn
- Long Pond Revisited
Free Music Notes for Lori Laitman: Becoming a Redwood
Free Music Review: Reprinted from The Journal of Singing
Hit: 5 Stars
Becoming A Redwood
reviewed by Gregory Berg in The Journal of Singing, May/June 2007
Here is yet another collection that confirms the greatness of song composer Lori Laitman. It is difficult to think of anyone before the public today who equals her exceptional gifts for embracing a poetic text and giving it new and deeper life through music. She has an unerring way of enhancing a text's beauty and meaning while not obscuring the text through artifice or excess. One also has to admire how deeply personal her songs are, and that depth of self-expression is surely one of the chief reasons why singers are drawn to her work and find her songs so gratifying to perform.
As with a previous Laitman collection reviewed in this column, this recording features very helpful liner notes written by the composer herself. Laitman gives background on the text at hand, and then manages to explain her setting of that text without getting too technical. She is especially careful to point out instances of word painting that otherwise might not be discerned. Full texts are included, which is a relief, since her singers do not always manage to articulate the texts with perfect clarity. The recording features an array of superb singers, most of whom are performing music that was composed for them and/or that they premiered. They are an accomplished group, as are the various instrumentalists who are part of this as well, and every performance seems to be of the highest standard.
Every work on this disk is worth having and hearing, but special praise must be reserved for Daughters, featuring texts of two writers touched by the Holocaust. Laitman notes that this is her first composition for vocal soloist and piano trio, and one hopes that she will return to this array of musicians again and again. It's a beautifully balanced work, and the colors of piano, violin and cello meld with Patricia Green's voice in all kinds of haunting ways. Long Pond Revisited is also exceptionally beautiful for the way it features baritone solo to the accompaniment of one cello. It's a gorgeous combination which we have heard before, but this particular piece capitalizes on the eloquence of the cello so ideally. Another especially effective song is "The Apple Orchard," which is impeccably crafted and coherent. "Equations of the Light" is a fascinating sort of duet in which two individuals have a chance encounter on the street, with their respective songs blending almost uneasily at first before eventually coming together in unison. The music then shifts again as they go their separate way s and we're left with a nagging sense of unresolved hopes. Throughout this disk, one can not help but be impressed at how well Laitman manages to set poignant texts of heartbreak and loss, and then in the very next song will write just as effectively in a more light-hearted vein.
Albany has done a great deal over the years with American music, and this release certainly rises to the high standards we have come to expect from them.
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