Gerry Bryant: The Composers
Navona Records

Pianist Gerry Bryant has a number of recordings to his name, among them solo albums featuring classical music, original compositions, and reimagined pop tunes and standards as well as two releases by his jazz group PocketWatch. A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy, Harvard, and UCLA, Bryant has received ample formal training since childhood, but his interests and influences extend beyond classical into jazz and other genres, so much so he likens his music to “Third Stream,” the genres-transcending approach associated with composer Gunther Schuller.

Now, with The Composers Bryant initiates what's intended to be a multi-album project devoted solely to music by neglected Black classical composers. Complementing four pieces by Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins (1849-1908), a slave who was possibly the first Black American classical composer, are eleven by Florence Price (1887-1953), whose music has in recent years received renewed attention. Bryant's stirring renderings of her material serve as a terrific reminder of her considerable gifts, and, in fact, his affection for Price's music runs so deep, he includes her with Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff on his list of favourite composers. Adding to the release's appeal, violinist Mark Cargill partners with the pianist on five pieces, his contributions effectively interspersed throughout the digital-only collection rather than arriving in one fell swoop.

Bryant's recording offers a superb account of Price's music. The second movement of her Sonata in E Minor exudes a warm, folkloric quality that's especially evident in a tender, gospel-inflected theme that recurs throughout. Honeysuckle charms with guileless innocence and folk gestures, and the folk and gospel dimensions that are so integral to Price's writing are well-accounted for in the touching Song Without Words and the lyrical evocations Placid Lake and Sketches in Sepia. With Cargill aboard, the cantabile dimension of her music resonates even more pronouncedly. Ably supported by Bryant, his expressive violin sings plaintively throughout Andante Con Espressione and intensifies its ache. Near the album's end, the two perform three Negro spirituals, “O Holy Lord,” “Lord I Want to Be a Christian,” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” all memorable for the beauty, sincerity, and directness of their melodic expressions.

Born into slavery, Wiggins' blindness prevented him from working with other slaves; his salvation, so to speak, was the piano, whose sounds first captivated him when he heard his owner's young daughters practice and was inspired to take up the instrument himself. Eventually he played for Mark Twain and other well-known figures and toured the world to dazzle listeners. In his writing he would sometimes render real-world sounds into musical form, The Sewing Song an apt illustration (in fact, the subtitle in the original publication includes the words “Imitation of the sewing machine”). The cyclical upper-register patterns that give the piece drive suggest the movements of the machine, though Wiggins amplifies interest by pairing them with florid and decorative figures. Lilting 3/4 rhythms similarly evoke the flow of water movement during Wellenklange (Voice of the Waves), a dramatic showpiece that even hints allusively at ragtime and stride. The thematically related Water in the Moonlight, by comparison, exhibits a rather majestic air in its use of rippling arpeggios. Elsewhere he shows himself to be as capable in the non-programmatic department with the lyrical nocturne Reve Charmant.

March 2023