Photo by Shervin Lainez
Shara Nova
Vocalist Shara Nova has had a most interesting career. Possessed with a distinctive, flexible, powerful mezzo, she has moved with ease between indie-rock projects like her own My Brightest Diamond and commissions from contemporary composers like Nico Muhly and David Lang. And on top of this she has composed works for various groups including several orchestras. Last weekend at Present Music she offered perhaps her grandest collaboration to date: The Blue Hour, a 100-minute chamber song cycle co-written with four other composers (Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negró, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider) and set to Carolyn Forché’s poem “On Earth.”
Prior to this, I don’t think I had heard (or heard of) a song cycle longer than an hour. This piece, as long as a movie, was a lot to take in. I did admire the boldness of it, elevating the art song form to something so epic and insisting on setting the entire text of the poem. Moving through letters of the alphabet, the poetry tries to capture a soul moving from life to death, holding onto concrete images and emotions, and in this way the length gave it the heft of a midnight vigil. In a practical move, the program book did not include the whole text, instead just key phrases that began each section by each composer.
From a compositional standpoint, The Blue Hour was a triumph of artistic teamwork. The group of composers chose well in keeping the ensemble to just strings, writing in similar harmonic language, and not overly developing material in each short section of the piece. All of these factors helped to create continuity.
Lush Sounds
Under a blue halo of light in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s atrium, Shara Nova presented the whole throughline of this piece wonderfully, always compelling. Her voice against the strings was very pleasant to listen to whether singing or speaking, and she enunciated well. I caught about 80% of the text, which is respectable in a piece of this length. Conductor Deanna Tham gave clear cues to keep the ensemble on track, brought lush sounds out of the strings, and showed dancelike animated movements in the faster moments.
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Out of the individual sections, I especially liked Caroline Shaw’s contributions; in “J’ai rêvé” she had noble string chords arising out of scratch tones, and “Firmament” ran with a poetic mention of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, saturating the music with Bach’s motives. She again turned to the classics in the section that ended the piece, with arpeggios in a single harmony that recalled the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Sarah Kirkland Snider often shaped her sections into dramatic peaks to showcase Nova’s vocal power, as in “Early summer.” Less intense but heartfelt, “I am alone” featured a beautiful texture of string scales. I enjoyed Nova’s own “Library lilacs,” with tone painting of text that included “inexhaustible light,” and “Nevertheless” had some nice viola solos played by Alejandro Duque. Angélica Negrón’s “Her hair” was a hypnotic study in string ricochet technique, and “The hole” memorably set the text “The hole of my mouth where my ancestor stands burning.” Rachel Grimes made a strong impression in the opening music and in the rich string interlude at the end of “The name.”
In a piece with 40 distinct sections, some were less memorable than others. And a few times, as in Grimes’ “In the toy store,” murmuring voices or atmospheric sound effects came through the speakers. It created distracting moments where I wasn’t sure if the sounds were part of a playback tape or being created by the performers onstage. The musicians did indeed sing, hum, or speak at various points in the score, but the shifts were jarring. They were the only moments that didn’t really gel with the rest of the piece. In another listen, I might see a connection of these choices with the text, as I was distracted enough that I missed some of the text at those points.
Copies of Carolyn Forché’s poetry collection The Blue Hour were available for sale at a merch table, and I should have picked one up. Again, I can’t overstate how the text was a lot to digest (and my brain usually prioritized processing the music), but striking images jumped out from time to time. One that I jotted down was “The ganglia of a train map, metastasizing cities.” The use of the alphabet as an anchor fit the theme of traversing consciousness and different life stages. A deeper dive into the poem, followed by another dive into the music, would surely be stimulating.
Apparently, this piece was only set to be performed in Milwaukee and Paris, so I feel lucky to have heard it. Despite a long running time and some iffy speaking moments from the musicians, The Blue Hour is a strong work, both intimate and ambitious, and made with heart. It’s an exciting new landmark for Shara Nova and a solid showcase for the talents of the Carolyn Forché and the composers.
