Present Music deserves substantial credit for creating and sustaining what has been embraced as a major annual holiday event in its Thanksgiving concert. In its 18th year, this has usually been held at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, the location for the concert on Sunday.
Venerated American composer Ingram Marshall (b. 1942) was in attendance to hear the premiere of his Alleluia Grace. It captured the sense of Americana and nostalgia that has been a theme of Present Music’s Thanksgiving concerts. A recording from the 1942 Alabama Sacred Harp Convention of the opening of the hymn “Northfield” is heard early on and comes back with sound processing at the end.
The amplified string quartet and four solo voices are used in Ingram’s innovative ways. He describes it best: “Sounds are doubled and sometimes tripled by a system of digital delays that govern the density and overall texture of the music.” Rather than technical, the results are mysteriously beautiful. The quartet plays strains of “At the River,” and the singers conjure the spirit of gratefulness in Alleluias. Ingram balances simplicity and complexity to achieve something that was ultimately emotional and evocative.
The music I’ve heard by Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) has a sense of drama not found in the work of most contemporary composers. He convincingly writes well for the voice and composes artful word settings, rare talents indeed. All these were evident in his song cycle, The Pieces That Fall to Earth, set to seven poems by Kay Ryan. There was grand majesty in slow-moving harmonies under rising vocal lines, from low to very high. Soprano Lindsay Kesselman gave the music heartfelt presence in exciting singing that roused the audience to spontaneous ovation.
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The Ronald Reagan High School choir sang Their Passing in Time by Richard Reed Parry (b. 1977), a long crescendo of a piece that ends in spirited rhythm. I want to again hear Târ o pood (Warp and Weft) by Sahba Aminikia (b. 1981) to grasp its exotic Iranian influences. The Bucks Native American Singing and Drumming Group began and ended the concert—a Present Music tradition.
