Monica Houghton: Of Time & Place
Navona Records

Like many before her, Monica Houghton benefits greatly from Navona's presentation of its artists. This collection of chamber works by the Vermont-born composer will surely satisfy those already familiar with her work and delight those new to it. Both categories of listener will come away from Of Time & Place appreciative of her gifts and enriched by the portrait. It's telling that along with the music degree she earned from the Cleveland Institute of Music, Houghton majored in Chinese Language and Literature and East Asian Studies at Harvard. Consistent with that broad perspective, her openness to experience has profoundly enhanced the purview of her music. Though she's the composer and co-librettist of the opera The Big Bonanza (the recipient of the New Music New England Concert Award from the Boston Metro Opera in 2010) and has seen works performed by a number of orchestras, the eight pieces on Of Time & Place are intimate chamber settings. Featured on the sixty-five-minute set are ensembles that have commissioned, performed, and/or recorded her material, including Cleveland Chamber Collective and Argenta Trio.

The album title's apt in referencing how fundamentally tied Houghton's creative process is to the places she's been and to the works of earlier poets and composers. For her, creative material doesn't originate from some independent, hermetic realm; instead, Houghton draws from locales throughout the world, with a journey on foot through the mountains of Peru the creative impetus behind Andean Suite and Houghton's deep connection to the marvels of the natural world reflected in Wilderness Portraits: Three Places in Nevada. In other settings, Tang Dynasty poet Tu Fu, Brazilian poet Maria Davico, New Spain's Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, and Beethoven serve as sources of inspiration.

Precisely how much her music is informed by external experience is indicated by 2014's Andean Suite, a four-movement setting beautifully rendered by cellist Dmitri Atapine and pianist Hyeyeon Park. Houghton directly incorporated into “Lacuna” a four-note figure played on flute by a man of Incan descent she met during her Peru sojourn, whereas a horse she witnessed standing in a meadow eventually inspired the third movement, “White Horse.” Her penchant for lyricism is captured magnificently in the opening “With the Condors,” whose liberating, open-air melodies the duo execute gracefully; employing folk music idioms of the Andes, the concluding “Dance” exudes a joy that might remind you a little bit of Copland's Rodeo.

Performed by Argenta Trio, the Nevada portraits draw even more directly from specific locales, in this case three areas within the state, and effectively capture the composer's humble awe in confronting the beauty of the natural world, be it the majesty of “Mount Charleston” or the panoramic scope offered by “High Rock Canyon.” In pairing Mary Kay Robinson's flute with Don Better's guitar, the fresh, open-aired tone of Three Songs Without Words is emblematic of a recording whose character is so much rooted in nature, a quality further reflected in the song titles “Spring Rain” and “Snow Storm.” In writing Sky Signs (2005), which pairs Cleveland Duo's violin and piano playing with James Umble's saxophone, Houghton was struck by changes she witnessed in the sky, from a shape-shifting cirrus cloud to a particularly vivid sunset. More informal than the recording's other pieces, Sky Signs unfolds in rather free-floating manner as it advances beyond the opening seven-note figure voiced by soprano sax into bold explorations by all three participants.

Not everything on the collection was inspired by nature: Houghton wrote the single-movement Epigram, here given an affecting performance by the Cleveland Chamber Collective, in response to Beethoven's last quartet, and the two solo piano works likewise draw from other sources: The Twelve Causes from the Circle of Becoming (2013), executed with zeal and sensitivity by James Winn, is Houghton's attempt to distill into dramatic musical form the essence of Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Life paintings, and Corpo Sonoro (2007), whose four contemplative, at times brooding ruminations are performed by Halida Dinova, drew from poems by the Brazilian Davico.

July 2018