European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Bernard Rands's Walcott Songs in Chicago; Vincent Released by Naxos Records

Mar. 30, 2017

Bernard Rands's <em>Walcott Songs</em> in Chicago; <em>Vincent</em> Released by Naxos Records

Bernard Rands’s Walcott Songs receives a performance at Chicago's The Cliff Dwellers on April 28 with mezzo-soprano Julia Bently and cellist Eli Lara.

Rands’s Walcott Songs sets three texts by Nobel Laureate and Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott—Endings, The Fist, and Midsummer, Tobago—who passed away on March 17, 2017. Rather than create conventional settings for Walcott’s poetry, Rands explored and analyzed the texts through fragmentation, reordering, repetitions and changing the pace of delivery. “Thus,” writes Rands, “the poems find new meanings and expression, in a musical context, often beyond that imagined or intended by the poet.” 

Listen to a recording of Endings from Walcott Songs, recorded by mezzo-soprano Janice Felty and cellist Thomas Kraines on Albany Records: 

In other vocal news, the first commercial recording of Rands’s “powerfully affecting” opera Vincent is now available from Naxos Records. The recording features the world premiere cast, including baritone Christopher Burchett, tenor Will Perkins and bass-baritone Jason Eck, with Arthur Fagen leading the Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra.

Inspired in the 1970’s by the then new Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Rands researched and sketched Vincent for the next 40 years. Vincent represents much of the great painter’s life, focusing on the dramatic setbacks of his later years. Following its premiere in 2011, the work was hailed as “aural magic … an opera that should be taken up by the operatic establishment” (The American Record Guide).

Listen to the recording, available now from Naxos:

 

For more information on Bernard Rands, visit schott-music.com.

Bernard Rands
Walcott Songs (2004)
for mezzo-soprano and cello
texts (Eng) by Derek Walcott
15’

Vincent (2010)
opera in two acts
libretto (En) by J.D. McClatchy
for 2 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, countertenor, 2 baritones, 3 basses and SATB chorus
3(3.pic.afl).2.3(3.bcl).2-4.3.2.btbn.1-timp.2perc-hp.cel.acc.pno-str
110' 

News