The contrast was as stark as possible in Sunday's Kennedy Center program by the Master Chorale, Donald McCullough conducting. Before intermission, it was pure radiance: portions of the "Sacred Service" composed by Darius Milhaud in 1947 for Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. In this music, Milhaud recalled the distinctive worship songs heard in his youth in Provence, a branch of Jewish religious music not familiar elsewhere. In the performance by McCullough's large, superbly trained chorus, it was like a breath of fresh air in springtime, a song of pure love for the Creator and the beauty of his creation.
After intermission, it was one horror after another, transformed and cleansed but also intensified by being worked into verbal and musical art. McCullough's composition (he calls it an "arrangement"), titled "In the Shadow of the Holocaust," uses texts and melodies from concentration camps in Poland preserved at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. McCullough generously credits collaborators who helped him shape the material: Marcin Zmudzki, who translated the Polish texts, chorus member Denny Clark, who worked them into poetic forms, and James Kessler, who orchestrated the music. But the cantata has an artistic form and vision, a series of contrasts in content and texture that generate its impact, and for that McCullough deserves the credit.
It is a work of extraordinary power, dealing with an intensely uncomfortable subject but one that we cannot lose from memory.
Individual members of the chorus gave many readings from the camps' oral history, contrasting with the fairly simple melodies of the choral segments and constituting a well-rounded if sometimes agonizing work of art.
Joshua Kowalski's eloquent solo cello gave frequent musical commentaries on the words. Arnold Saltzman was the reader in the "Sacred Service," while baritone Steven Combs sang solos. In McCullough's music, which included the brief "We Remember Them" as well as a Holocaust cantata, eloquent solos were sung by soprano Angela Powell and mezzo-soprano Sylvia V.C. Twine.
-- Joseph McLellan
Gloria Lynne
Some performers can't deliver their old hits with the vitality they once had after singing them on tour for decades. This isn't a problem for veteran jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne.
At a fundraiser Monday night at the Lincoln Theatre for the "Jazz Night in Southwest" program, the 73-year-old Lynne imbued each number with passion. This Harlem native, whose popularity peaked in the late '50s and early '60s, has maintained a following and kept her artistic reputation.
She started out the evening upbeat with the swinging "So This Is Love," but such a tempo is not what established her name. Lynne's specialty is poignant, slowly enunciated ballads blending jazz phrasing, sentimental pre-rock pop, and church-rooted rhythm and blues. Lynne's finest slow-dance songs lushly capture either the joy of falling in love or the pain of a shattered heart.
On "I'm Glad There Is You," her intonation dramatically smoldered and built to a vocal crescendo, while "Young and Foolish" had her wistfully looking back at her teenage years. Lynne's band, led by pianist Roy Meriwether and acoustic bassist Michael Max Fleming, aided immeasurably in conjuring the atmospheric mood. They delicately served up sensitive minor chords while the singer extended and held notes on the bittersweet standard "Everything Must Change."
Urged on by fans not to delay her timeless signature piece "I Wish You Love" until the end, Lynne relented and crooned it slightly earlier. Her gentle tone and the supporting bluesy piano notes expertly conveyed the resigned feel of a wintertime goodbye to a friendship that never blossomed into romance.
-- Steve Kiviat
Gloria Lynne
Some performers can't deliver their old hits with the vitality they once had after singing them on tour for decades. This isn't a problem for veteran jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne.
At a fundraiser Monday night at the Lincoln Theatre for the "Jazz Night in Southwest" program, the 73-year-old Lynne imbued each number with passion. This Harlem native, whose popularity peaked in the late '50s and early '60s, has maintained a following and kept her artistic reputation.
She started out the evening upbeat with the swinging "So This Is Love," but such a tempo is not what established her name. Lynne's specialty is poignant, slowly enunciated ballads blending jazz phrasing, sentimental pre-rock pop, and church-rooted rhythm and blues. Lynne's finest slow-dance songs lushly capture either the joy of falling in love or the pain of a shattered heart.
On "I'm Glad There Is You," her intonation dramatically smoldered and built to a vocal crescendo, while "Young and Foolish" had her wistfully looking back at her teenage years. Lynne's band, led by pianist Roy Meriwether and acoustic bassist Michael Max Fleming, aided immeasurably in conjuring the atmospheric mood. They delicately served up sensitive minor chords while the singer extended and held notes on the bittersweet standard "Everything Must Change."
Urged on by fans not to delay her timeless signature piece "I Wish You Love" until the end, Lynne relented and crooned it slightly earlier. Her gentle tone and the supporting bluesy piano notes expertly conveyed the resigned feel of a wintertime goodbye to a friendship that never blossomed into romance.
-- Steve Kiviat
