Duo Sureño & Carolina Chamber Players: Continuum
Teal Music Productions

The five contemporary works on Continuum are performed by Duo Sureño and Carolina Chamber Players, but they're not entirely separate groups: soprano Nancy King and classical and baroque guitarist Robert Nathanson have operated under the name Duo Sureño since 1999; with Swiss saxophonist Laurent Estoppey, Vienna-based violinist Livia Sellin, and guitarist Helmut Jasbar added to the fold, the ensemble assumes the Carolina Chamber Players name. Various combinations of the musicians deliver the album material, which comprises pieces by William Grosvenor Neil, David Leisner, and Jasbar and includes one performed by Duo Sureño alone.

The release comes to us by way of Teal Music Productions, a student-run label within the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. King is an associate professor of vocal studies at the university, and Nathanson is likewise employed at the school, he as a music professor. Both are heavily involved in other endeavours, she as the artistic director of Opera Wilmington and as an active concert soloist and Nathanson a recitalist, recording artist, and orchestral soloist who's also a member of Ryoanji Duo (guitar and saxophone) and the North Carolina Guitar Quartet.

Bookending the release are Neil compositions that deal in different ways with the normalization of violence and love's betrayal. Whereas Kara Jackson's words for Love Poem with a Knife satirically describes a woman trapped in an oppressive relationship, Tim Eddy's for Continuum considers both the dehumanization that hate and fear engenders and the power music has to counter it. Also represented by two works is Leisner, whose splendid Letter to the World was reviewed not long ago in these pages. Commissioned by Nathanson, his Singing to the Stars sets music to three poems about, what else, stars; Leisner's instrumental composition Tsunami, on the other hand, was also written at the behest of Nathanson and couples him with Estoppey. For his contribution to the project, Jasbar treated extremely different songs in Kaddish: Three Sephardic Songs to dramatic re-arrangement without changing their melodies.

There's much to like about the release. With no more than five players involved, the performances are genuinely chamber-like in character and intimate too. At the outset, Neil's Love Poem with a Knife receives an insightful reading from King, Nathanson, Sellin, and Jasbar, with the soprano emoting dramatically in response to Jackson's provocative text and the others engaging as deeply with the material. Flurries of guitar entwine with Sellin's plucks and bowings, and percussive knocks punctuate a seven-minute performance that's more than a little riveting.

With Estoppey joining the quartet featured on the opener, Leisner's Singing to the Stars begins with “Antidotes to the Fear of Death,” whose words by Rebecca Elson ponder our place in the universe and conflicting feelings of anxiety and stillness. The Emily Brontë text used in the alternately gentle and animated “Stars” explores contrasts between earthly chaos and celestial calm and sees the stars as a source of solace. Estoppey and Sellin excel in this instance, but the others acquit themselves admirably too. Words by Kenneth Patchen in the contemplative “Fall of the Evening Star” concern a love sung performed by someone gazing heavenward. Midway through the release, the composer's Tsunami arrests the ear with acrobatic exchanges between Nathanson's guitar and Estoppey's soprano sax.

King and Nathanson deliver a heartfelt reading of Jasbar's for Kaddish: Three Sephardic Songs, the opening “Avre Este Abajour” affecting in its declarations of love, “Salgash Madre” touching in evoking the excitement of a mother-in-law seeing her son's beautiful bride, and “Adio” suitably mournful. Neil's Continuum concludes the recording with the same quartet with which it began, the tone of the eleven-minute setting often agitated and the execution by the four gripping in its intensity. Continuum might appear on a student-run label, but the production quality of the album is first-rate. The vocal and instrumental performances have been captured with exceptional clarity, and the physical presentation of the project is of professional calibre too. It's a release of which the musicians and those involved in bringing it into the world can be proud.

February 2024