Christopher Cerrone: The Pieces That Fall to Earth
New Amsterdam Records

More than three years in the making, The Pieces That Fall to Earth benefits from three things in particular: refined writing by Brooklyn-based composer Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984), who demonstrates in the recording's three vocal cycles a mature command of the idiom; superb playing by the Los Angeles-based ensemble Wild Up (conducted by Artistic Director Christopher Rountree); and, finally, stirring vocal performances by Lindsay Kesselman (on the title work), Theo Bleckmann (The Naomi Songs), and an eight-member choir on The Branch Will Not Break. The combination of all three makes for an exceptionally rewarding outcome that shows Cerrone in particular in a most flattering light.

The Pieces That Fall to Earth arrives two years after the CD/DVD release of his Invisible Cities, a site-specific opera treatment based on the Italo Calvino work that brought the composer recognition as a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In his liner notes for the new release, Timo Andres makes an illuminating point in noting that “Cerrone's soloists sing in full sentences, set in strophic, melodically memorable lines.” More than a passing detail, that observation helps explain why the material on the recording resonates so powerfully. Whereas some composers' vocal lines amount to functional fragments, Cerrone elevates his pieces with elegant, fully formed melodies that stay with the listener.

Another aspect that distinguishes his vocal material is emotional intensity. In all three cases, the singers' voices communicate with heightened levels of feeling and directness that establish an immediate connection. States of loneliness, alienation, and longing reverberate through the American poets' texts and in the treatments the composer and vocalists bring to them. Andres again convincingly contends that Cerrone “selects poetry not to deconstruct, but to heighten and concentrate it.” His choice of the opening song in the seven-part title work aptly illustrates this in the way Kay Ryan's text repeats three times, with each pass larger in volume and intensity. While the text itself has to do with the randomness of events, the music communicates clarity through the repetition of the soprano's utterances and Wild Up's backing. Elsewhere, the poems muse on the instability of hope and the atomization of the self, Ryan's poems jarring provocations that give Cerrone a fabulous foundation for his luminous constructions.

I do differ with Andres on one point, however: to these ears, his description of the instrumental backings as “landscapes of cold instrumental sounds” seems a tad extreme. Yes, there is sometimes a severe quality to the arrangements, with the elements coalescing in certain moments into an emphatic rhythm machine and in others a hammering mass of piano, harp, and mallet instruments. The ensemble's crystalline sound does, however, complement the singers' performances, especially when the musicians calibrate their playing carefully to match the vocal execution. Hear, for instance, how expertly Wild Up reduces the intensity for the title work's “Hope” and then mirrors the agitation expressed by the words in “That Will to Divest” with a crawling, step-wise ascent. Kesselman's magnificent, never more so than during the final movement, “The Woman Who Wrote Too Much,” which requires her to move seamlessly from a delicate hush to upper-register declamation until the climax arrives with the repeated affirmation “It is a miracle.”

The Naomi Songs follows, with Bleckmann singing words by Bill Knott centering on the loneliness wrought by a failed romance. Similar to the opening work, Cerrone's writing captures the yearning expressed in the texts, even if the material in this four-part work is cued to a less overtly dramatic pitch. In the concluding The Branch Will Not Break, the seven texts by James Wright often look outward, the narrator enumerating nature details observed at various locations. Landscapes and creatures (farmers, horses, trees, butterflies, birds, etc.) populate these chamber-styled movements, which are elevated by the lustrous polyphony of the eight singers (two each of sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses). The material Cerrone created for The Branch Will Not Break shows he made good use of the abundance of imagery included in Wright's evocative texts.

September 2019