Witness, the soul of American music.

Got the Saint Louis blues, Classical music in the Jazz Age (Clarion CLR907CD ©2006).

VocalEssence Ensemble; Philip Brunelle, conductor; liner notes by Dominique-René de Lerma; texts; series note; performer bios.

Burleigh, Harry T.  Ethiopia's paean to exaltation.  (5:40).

Burleigh, Harry T.  O Southland.  (3:08).

Dett, R. Nathaniel.  Ave Maria.  Ryan French, baritone.  (3:31).

Dett, R. Nathaniel.  Listen to the lambs.  (4:28).

Dett, R. Nathaniel.  The chariot jubilee.  Michael Forest, tenor.  (11:43).

Diton, Carl R.  Poor mourner's got a home at last.  (3:14).

Jenkins, Edmond Thornton.  Charlestoniana; Folk rhapsody for orchestra, no. 1; reconstructed by Vincent Plush.  (9:30).

Johnson, James P.  Yamekraw; a Negro rhapsody.  Paul Shaw, piano, with orchestra.  (15:59).

Handy, W. C.  Saint Louis blues, arr. by Hall Johnson.  (4:28).

Price, Florence.  Moon bridge . (2:23).

Price, Florence.  Song for snow  (1:57).

This series of four CDs is enjoyable – no question about that – but in the process offers an extraordinary educational potential.  The conductor has shown the insight of a highly attuned historian, who can put musicologists out of business as he surveys the African American musical scene of the past century, selecting works of unquestioned historical importance such as one reads about but suspects will never be heard.  This is balanced with works of genuine merit, no matter how tentative were the times.

Philip Brunelle is based in the musically rich twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but his frequent engagements carry him to South America and Europe.  While he is billed as a choral conductor, he is as at home with an orchestra as before the keyboards of the piano or organ.  His concerts, which he founded in 1969 as the Plymouth Music Series, addresses a repertoire not scheduled by the area’s eponymous orchestra, but does speak to the various ethnic communities.  Their work is not confined to the formality of the concert hall, but is shared with school children (The Twin Cities, with a population under 4000,000, have an unusually diverse population.  About 10% are Chippewa, 5% African American, and 4% each Hispanic or Asian), but VocalEssence, while celebrating these and various European heritages, closes any gaps that might exist in multiracial perspectives.

The earliest work in this set is Diton’s Poor moaners got a home at last, from 1914.  It comes from these days before the Harlem Renaissance, when songs of slave times were only gradually being accepted.  Diton is not often greeted as one of the first figures who sought to make legitimate these precious melodies from the previous century, but he has securely earned that position.

This was the same year as Dett’s Listen to the lambs for which he won $25 in a competition.  In fact, this is a priceless classic, elegantly performed.  When we hear Dvorák’s American quartet, we might not be reminded of the spiritual, but Dett, when a student at Oberlin, heard this work in a performance by the Kneisel Quartet, and was reminded of the music his grandmother sang during his Canadian childhood.  He dedicated much of his life then towards transforming these gems into anthems and art songs.

Most unexpected within this anthology is quite possibly Charlestoniana (1917), an early work by the son of the founder of Charleston’s Jenkins Orphanage (that produced, for example, Cat Anderson).  The composer was yet a composition student in Europe, dying only nine years later in Belgium, suggesting we should look not just at New York, Chicago, or even the U.S. for roots of the Harlem Renaissance.  Here was a talent and an ambition that was cut too short for its full flowering.  The reconstruction by the Australian Vincent Plush involved preparing a concordance of several unfinished drafts, held, like all of Jenkins’ extant works, by the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago.

Chronologically next was Burleigh’s O Southland (1919), the text by James Weldon Johnson.  It was two years later that Burleigh wrote Ethiopia’s paean to exaltation.  The text was by a former slave from North Carolina, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, who was to earn her Ph.D. in 1925 from the Sorbonne.

In 1920 was the première of Dett’s The chariot jubilee, which very likely was the first instance of the expansion of a spiritual (Swing low, sweet chariot) into a motet (to be followed in 1930 by his oratorio, The ordering of Moses, his graduate thesis at the Eastman School of Music).  This was the same year as his Ave Maria, written for his chorus at the Hampton Institute in Virginia.

Florence Price’s Moon bridge comes from 1927, the text by Mary Rolofson Gamble (of the Gamble Hinged Music Company) and Song for snow from 1930, a tribute to her days in Maine (text by Elizabeth Coatsworth).  These are two quite innocuous works for chorus.  Price is well remembered as a piano teacher from her days in Chicago, where one of her young students was Ned Rorem.

Hall Johnson’s setting of the 1914 Handy hit was prepared for the 1939 film, The best of the blues, at a time Johnson had been writing and conducting for Hollywood, where he and his chorus migrated from New York to participate in the film version of The green pastures.  The performance, not overly refined, cannot fail to elicit smiles from the listeners.  This is a joyously, self-assured work.

Skyward my people rose; Music of William Grant Still (Clarion CLR905CD ©2004)

VocalEssence Ensemble; Philip Brunelle, conductor; liner notes by Dominique-René de Lerma; texts; series note; performer bios.

Swanee river.  (2:56).

And they lynched him on a tree.  Hilda Harris, mezzo-soprano; William Warfield, narrator; Leigh Morris Chorale  (17:34).

Miss Sally’s party.  String orchestra.  (9:11).

Reverie.  Philip Brunelle, organ. (3:56)

Elegy.  Philip Brunelle, organ.  (5:25).

There certainly has never been any question about William Grant Still’s standing in Black music history, and hardly any justification for signaling him as a major person to define American music.  Further, one immediately claim his afro-American symphony of 1930 as being the culmination of the aspirations of the Harlem Renaissance. “elevating” the folkloric to the idealization of the concert world (this, despite the rise of Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith by that time).  Still grew up in the legacy of the blues and jazz, never disdaining either, but reaching for the world of the symphony and opera.  His passion for the latter genre was frustrated in what should have been a major breakthrough.  Troubled island received it première and only production during his life by the New York City Opera.  It fate was determined after only three performances in 1949 by a cabal of racist critics, defying the audience enthusiasm and twenty-two curtain calls (The story is told in the richly documented Just tell the story; Troubled island by Judith Anne Still and Lisa M. Headlee – Flagstaff: The Master-Player Library, 2006).

The works heard on this CD, several for the very first time) come both before and after that unfortunate event.  First is his choral setting of Stephen Foster’s Swanee river. ==

The poignant cantata, And they lynched him on a tree, was written in 1940 to a text by Catherine Garrison Chapin.  For this performance, Brunelle has called on the stellar forces of Hilda Harris, the late William Warfield, with the African American chorus, Robert L. Morris’ Leigh Morris Chorale providing a sympathetic counterpart to the singers of VocalEssence.==

Miss Sally’s party is a ballet, the scenario provided by the composer’s multi-gifted wife and frequent collaborator, Verna Arvey.  It centers around mischievous boys who misbehave, failing to win the concluding cakewalk.

The last two works are performed by the conductor, now as organist.  The pair come from 1961 and 1963, and could well serve as meditative occasional pieces.

One feature that is in included on all of these recordings is the specification of publishers (many of the Still works are available from William Grant Still in Flagstaff, operated by the composer’s daughter, who has a virtual archive of no end of materials related to all aspects of her father’s life and works – jazz arrangements and recordings from the 1920s as well as film scores from the early days of sound movies, when Still’s distinctive orchestral sonorities established the Klangideal even for Russian films of the time).

What a mighty God; Spirituals and gospels for chorus (Clarion CLR904CD ©2004)

VocalEssence Ensemble; Philip Brunelle, conductor; liner notes by Dominique-René de Lerma; texts; series note; performer bios.

Abels, Michael.  What a might God.  Moore by Four; VocalEssence Chorus; Sanford Moore, piano; Joe Pulice, drums; Gordon Johnson, double bass.  (4:14).

Adelmann, Dale.  Swing low, sweet chariot.  Steve Burger, baritone.  (3:27).

Burleigh, Harry T.   My Lord, what a morning.  (3:40).

Dennard, Brazeal W.  Hush! Somebody’s calling my name.  Yolanda Williams, soprano.  (4:40).

Hailstork, Adolphus.  Crucifixion.  (5:14).

Hairston, Jester.  In dat great gittin’ up mornin’.  Yolanda Williams, soprano.  (3:03).

Halloran, Jack.  Witness.  Sigrid Johnson, conductor.  (3:27).

Harris, Robert A.  Go down, Moses.  Yolanda Williams, soprano.  (5:12).

Hogan, Moses.  Elijah rock.  (3:42).

Moore, Sanford.  Go, tell it on the mountain.  Robert Commodore, drums; Jay Young, double bass.  (5:04).

Moore, Sanford.  This train.  Moore by Four.  (7:39).

Scholz, Robert.  Were you there?.  Brian Link, Tenor.  (4:00).

Smallwood, Richard.  Jesus, lover of my soul.  Moore by Four; Philip Brunelle, piano.  (5:22).

Smith, William Henry.  Walk together, children.  Sanford Moore, piano.  (2:33).

Thomas, André.  Death is gonna lay his cold, icy hands on me.  James Bohn, baritone; Sanford Moore, piano.  (3:45).

Thomas, André.  Go where I send thee.  Michael Morgensen, baritone; Charles Kemper, piano.  (3:27).

Non-Black choruses and soloists are either fearless or inhibited when it comes to the performance of spirituals or texts with dialect.  Is there any reason why they should avoid this music?  If so, then in a parallel situation, a Black singer should avoid German Lieder and Italian opera, but what a loss it would be had Leontyne Price or Jessye Norman followed that restriction!  Of course, these ladies had to deal with diction in the foreign language, but that is an obligation every singer must face.  It is not a linguistic barrier facing the non-Black singer when the repertoire is enriched, it is political.  Jessye Norman’s French is so flawless that she was called on to participate in the 200^th anniversary of the French revolution, and no protest was registered to my knowledge from France, which has a very strong protectionist policy about its culture. 

Brunelle’s singers face the dialect straight on, and replicate the sonority of a fine Black college chorus.  So also do the singers from St. Olaf, guided by Dr. Anton Armstrong.

The question arises about the setting of a traditional spiritual by one who is not Black, and that is exemplified in a few instances with this recording, but a critical listener would be no more able to identify those composers than one can signal the gender of a composer by the sound of the music.

Of course, we are blessed by the masterful settings of such classic figures as Burleigh (his My Lord might well be the most marvelously performed work here), Hairston, and the more recent figures such as Thomas, Dennard, Hailstork, and Harris.  The gospel element enters with the performances of Moore by Four, a well-established ensemble, although some might feel this idiom is in strange company here.

Bach’s Sheep may safely graze is merged with Jesus, love of my soul, a gospel synthesis so often beautifully performed in recital by the late Pearl Williams-Jones.

But who is Michael Abels?  We first encountered his work in Detroit some years back, when Global warming heralded the emergence of a quite gifted young man.  We do not even yet have a proper perspective on his output, where are found pieces for children performers and now he appears in gospel guise.  One yearns to have him better represented on recordings.

Dance like the wind; Music of today’s Black composers (Clarion CLR906CD ©2004)

VocalEssence Ensemble; Philip Brunelle, conductor; liner notes by Dominique-René de Lerma; texts; series note; performer bios.

Baker, David.  Images, shadows, and dreams.  VocalEssence Chorus; Michele Frisch, flute; Chris Kachian, guitar; Charles Kemper, piano; Greg Hippen, double bass; Robert Stacke, drums.  (17:14).

Banfield, William.  Dance like the wind.  Michele Frisch, flute Kathy Robison, oboe; Joseph Longo, clarinet; Paul Straka, horn; Kevin Coria, bassoon.  (9: 45).

Childs, Billy.  Piece for string orchestra.  2. Slow.  3. Fast.  ( 13:03).

Hailstork, Adolphus.  Nocturne.  Maria Jette, soprano.  (6:59).

Jennings, Joseph.  An old Black woman, homeless and indistinct.   (9:49). 

Moore, Undine Smith.  Mother to son.  Yolanda Williams, soprano.  (2:41).

Moore, Undine Smith.  Tambourines to glory.   (1:03).

Moore, Undine Smith.  We shall walk through the valley.  (2:54).

Perkinson, Coleridge-Taylor.  Lamentations; Black folk song suite.  2. Song form.  4. Perpetual motion.  Anthony Elliott, cello.  (7:13).

Simpson-Currenton, Evelyn.  My soul hath fund refuge in thee.  Dan Dressen, tenor.  (4:54).

If we wonder who is Michael Abels for want of a richer discography, that question may also be raised in the case of David Baker, although his very extensive recorded oeuvre is no excuse.  Is there any composer who is so comfortably all over the place?  A violin concerto for Josef Gingold with jazz band, a cello sonata for Janos Starker, 12-tone jazz, song cycles, cantatas, liturgical jazz, jivey pieces for string ensemble … is the whole world of music his?

Clearly a most important figure of his generation, Banfield takes films seriously, and his offering here is in direct response to Cat on a hot tin roof, for woodwind quintet.

The senior figure here is Undine Smith Moore, whose career as a major music educator was dedicated to Virginia State University.  In the final decades of her life, her choral works began to receive substantial attention.

No longer with us is another giant in Perkinson, composer for films, orchestra and chamber groups, and a conductor of real substance.  His contribution here provides an opportunity to hear the work of Anthony Elliott, whose tenure at the University of Michigan followed years of substantial experience as principal cellist with major orchestras in the US and Canada.

The Simpson dynasty flourished from Temple Evangelical Church in Philadelphia – first in the person of Joy Simpson, whose death while protesting apartheid in South Africa deprived us of a voice, equallt comfortable with opera as with gospel music.  Her career lasted long enough to be joined with Marietta, a mezzo-soprano whose career evolved in international importance.  The third member of the family is a most remarkable musician whose imaginative settings of spirituals are unquestionable first-rate.

This set of four CDs belongs readily in any university or public library.  It illustrates, not only a chunk of African American legacy, but demonstrates the enviable musical forces available within the musical forces of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.  The conductor, who as musicologist is acutely aware of the monuments of the history he is tracing here, and he has at his command an exemplary assemblage of splendid choristers and instrumentalists.  With these recordings, all of this can be shared with a large and appreciative audience.