The three song cycles on this release of music by American composer Jake Heggie all date from the 1990s, before his breakthrough with the opera Dead Man Walking in 2000. They're not commonly performed, and Eve-Song (1996), a modern reflection on the biblical Eve, is recorded in full here for the first time. It's possible to regard these pieces as steps in building the musical language that has made Heggie so successful, and as such they should be of great interest to the composer's fans. Aspects of this language include a ...
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The three song cycles on this release of music by American composer Jake Heggie all date from the 1990s, before his breakthrough with the opera Dead Man Walking in 2000. They're not commonly performed, and Eve-Song (1996), a modern reflection on the biblical Eve, is recorded in full here for the first time. It's possible to regard these pieces as steps in building the musical language that has made Heggie so successful, and as such they should be of great interest to the composer's fans. Aspects of this language include a convincing incorporation of popular musical elements into a basic art-song framework, on display in Natural Selection (1997). This cycle sets poems by San Francisco writer Gini Savage, depicting a young woman's social and sexual awakening. Traces of jazz and tango appear in the music, but it does not fall into either of those genres. Heggie's accomplishment has been to create a language flexible enough to reflect the elevated concerns of concert music but conversant enough with...
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The American composer Jake Heggie (b; 1961) is becoming famous through his operas including "Moby-Dick" and "Dead Man Walking". Heggie is also a song composer with more that 250 works to his credit. "Connections: Three Song Cycles" is a new CD in Naxos' "American Classics" series which includes three cycles Heggie composed in the 1990s on the theme of women. Heggie wrote each of the cycles to be performed by a different singer whom he had come to know in San Francisco, they are all performed here by soprano Regina Zona, a specialist in American art song, and pianist Kathleen Tagg, a South African composer and producer as well as a pianist who has lived in New York City since 2001.
The three cycles on this CD, recorded in Yonkers New York in 2013, show Heggie's gifts as a song composer. The song cycles share many of the characteristics of his operas. They are immediately accessible, highly dramatic, and invite a stage or cabaret setting. The song cycles are eclectic and mix art song with jazz, tango, rhumba, and popular styles. Each cycle focuses on a specific woman who becomes woman in prototype. Heggie shapes his music beautifully around the lyrics, with the music assuming a protean character and often changing from line to line. The frequently virtuosic piano writing (Heggie is also a pianist) offers its own commentary on the poetry, sometimes quietly accompanying the singer but more often exploring the text on its own. Zona and Tagg have their hearts in this music and collaborate beautifully.
"Natural Selection" (1997) sets of five poems by a San Francisco writer, Gina Savage. The poems describe a young woman breaking free of her parents, exploring her sexual and romantic dreams, lamenting her choice of romantic partners and her unsuccessful marriage, and finally finding a degree of joy alone, as the last song is titled. The song may be emblematic of how many modern women see themselves. The music ranges from introspective to a wild rhythmic tango in the second song, "Animal Passion".
"Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia" (1999) begins with a poem by Heggie himself "Ophelia's Song" followed by three poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Women have Loved Before" "Not in a Silver Casket", and "Spring". Heggie's poem imagines Ophelia in the fields, contemplating her life and love before she takes her own life. Millay's poetry, exploring her own sexual and romantic relationships, are beautifully set and a joy to read and hear. They are not an entirely convincing fit with the story of Ophelia.
The earliest and longest of the three song cycles, "Eve-Song" (1996) receives its premier recording on this CD. It consists of eight songs with texts by Philip Littel about the Biblical Eve and her reflections upon her life. The first and lengthiest song, "My Name" is a musical tour-de-force consisting of wordless vocalise, recitive, jazz, parody, and operatic aria, as the Bible's first woman thinks about her creation, quest for independence, and about what will become the eternal war between the sexes. In subsequent songs, Eve shows her curiosity, humor, and search for experience as she names living creatures and falls to the wiles of the snake after a musical conversation in the song "Listen". She sings of anger between the sexes in "Woe to Men", describes childbirth in "The Wound" and recollects her later post-Garden life in "The Farm". "The Tigris and the Euphrates" she wryly concludes, "You might say/That's where it all started."
American art song remains an under-appreciated genre with Heggie carrying it forward in these three song cycles and other music. The performers and Heggie collaborated on the liner notes to the CD which also include full texts for the songs. Naxos deserves credit for championing American music in its ongoing series of American Classics. Naxos also kindly provided me with a review copy of this CD.
