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User Reviews about Lori Laitman: Becoming a Redwood

Becoming A Redwood
reviewed by Gregory Berg in The Journal of Singing, May/June 2007

Here is yet another collection that confirms the greatness of song composer Lori Laitman. It is difficult to think of anyone before the public today who equals her exceptional gifts for embracing a poetic text and giving it new and deeper life through music. She has an unerring way of enhancing a text's beauty and meaning while not obscuring the text through artifice or excess. One also has to admire how deeply personal her songs are, and that depth of self-expression is surely one of the chief reasons why singers are drawn to her work and find her songs so gratifying to perform.

As with a previous Laitman collection reviewed in this column, this recording features very helpful liner notes written by the composer herself. Laitman gives background on the text at hand, and then manages to explain her setting of that text without getting too technical. She is especially careful to point out instances of word painting that otherwise might not be discerned. Full texts are included, which is a relief, since her singers do not always manage to articulate the texts with perfect clarity. The recording features an array of superb singers, most of whom are performing music that was composed for them and/or that they premiered. They are an accomplished group, as are the various instrumentalists who are part of this as well, and every performance seems to be of the highest standard.

Every work on this disk is worth having and hearing, but special praise must be reserved for Daughters, featuring texts of two writers touched by the Holocaust. Laitman notes that this is her first composition for vocal soloist and piano trio, and one hopes that she will return to this array of musicians again and again. It's a beautifully balanced work, and the colors of piano, violin and cello meld with Patricia Green's voice in all kinds of haunting ways. Long Pond Revisited is also exceptionally beautiful for the way it features baritone solo to the accompaniment of one cello. It's a gorgeous combination which we have heard before, but this particular piece capitalizes on the eloquence of the cello so ideally. Another especially effective song is "The Apple Orchard," which is impeccably crafted and coherent. "Equations of the Light" is a fascinating sort of duet in which two individuals have a chance encounter on the street, with their respective songs blending almost uneasily at first before eventually coming together in unison. The music then shifts again as they go their separate way s and we're left with a nagging sense of unresolved hopes. Throughout this disk, one can not help but be impressed at how well Laitman manages to set poignant texts of heartbreak and loss, and then in the very next song will write just as effectively in a more light-hearted vein.

Albany has done a great deal over the years with American music, and this release certainly rises to the high standards we have come to expect from them. -- Reprinted from The Journal of Singing

It's inevitable that any American art-song composer will at some point be compared with Ned Rorem, as is done in this disc's booklet notes. It's a testament to the quality, melodic richness and subtlety of Lori Laitman's songs that for once the comparison is not inapt. The Albany label is clearly committed to the flautist-turned-composer, with this third disc following up two previous releases: "Mystery -- The Songs of Lori Laitman" in 2000 and "Dreaming" in 2003. I hadn't heard either but the current anthology, "Becoming a Redwood," is an extraordinarily impressive achievement.

The programme presents a variety of singers in five shortish cycles and a handful of individual settings. Early Snow offers three songs that display Laitman's gift for setting a mood with great economy and precise word-painting. "Last night the rain spoke to me" is lovely, Barber-like in its simple tonal melody. In the title-song Laitman distills the evocative scene and emotion most artfully. Jennifer Check is a sensitive advocate though her voice tends to turn shrill on top. In Daughters, Laitman's songs, setting poems by Anne Ranasinghe and Karen Gershon, are masterly, probing the requisite nostalgia and aching sense of loss. "Sheila Remembered" is particularly affecting with great depth of emotion, simply rendered. At nearly nine minutes, "A Letter to my Daughter" is the most extended song on the disc but Laitman sustains the structure masterfully, with a natural flow yet alert attention to the elliptical, shifting stanzas. Patricia Green's rich mezzo is well suited to these settings, and Laitman's inventive writing for the backing piano trio is on a similarly high level.

The Throwback, on varied poems by Paul Muldoon on the life cycle, benefits from the warm, incisive baritone and exemplary diction of William Sharp. The off-centre carousel feel of "The Ancestor" displays a quirky humour as striking as the deeper expression assayed in the other settings. In the cycle Becoming a Redwood soprano Barbara Quintiliani is a bit wobbly at times, though she is effective in the reflective moments, as with the beautifully floated vocalise at the coda of "Pentecost." The song that gives the disc its title is one of the finest here, with the piano postlude sensitively performed by the composer.

The Apple Orchard offers a gentle pastoralism, nicely etched by tenor Robert McPherson. "This Space Available" shows a more whimsical side, with a witty epigrammatic vocal line, as does the cabaret song Being Happy with its absurdist verse of social manners deftly delivered by baritone Lee Poulis. Written to poems of CGR Shepherd, Long Pond Revisited closely reflects the poems' loss, anger and acceptance, with obbligato cello adding to the burnished expressive depth, though the settings here are not quite as subtly varied in profile, dark and lovely as they are.

But this is a minor quibble in a disc that gives increasing evidence of a major talent; Lori Laitman's beautiful, sensitively crafted songs deserve to be performed widely, and much better known. Apart from some shrillness from the high female voices, the singers' inspired performances provide Laitman's music with all the advocacy it deserves. --Lawrence A Johnson -- Reprinted from Gramophone Magazine, March 2007

I discovered the wonderfully melodic, highly original songs of Lori
Laitman through her first album, "Mystery," and I later reviewed her
second album, "Dreaming," for Amazon. I couldn't wait to hear what this
gifted composer would produce next, and when "Becoming A Redwood" was
released last fall, I got a copy and listened often. Ms. Laitman's
genius shines through in each cycle, but her lyrical, emotional
settings of poet Dana Gioia are my favorites, sung
brilliantly by Barbara Quintiliani and Sari Gruber, Robert McPherson,
and Lee Poulis. A glowing review by Lawrence A. Johnson in the March
2007 issue of Gramophone only confirmed my beliefs: "It's inevitable that
any American art song composer will at some point be compared to Ned
Rorem...It's a testament to the quality, melodic richness and subtlety
of Laitman's songs that for once the comparison is not
inapt...Becoming A Redwood is an extraordinarily impressive
achievement...[It's] a disc that gives increasing evidence of a major
talent; Lori Laitman's beautiful, sensitively crafted songs deserve to
be performed widely and much better known...The singers' inspired
performances provide Laitman's music with all the advocacy it
deserves."

-- Lori Laitman Triumphs in Third CD!