Lori Laitman: The Ocean of Eternity—The Songs of Lori Laitman
Acis

American composer Lori Laitman has issued numerous art song-oriented albums since her debut album Mystery appeared in 2000, which might make it difficult to choose one over another. Yet in bringing together multiple strands of her music-making, The Ocean of Eternity presents a strong case for being as quintessential a Laitman portrait as any. There are stand-alone songs and song cycles, and the release features several world premiere recordings; adding to its appeal, it includes an independent song cycle extracted from her acclaimed oratorio Vedem and excerpts from Ludlow, the opera project she initiated with librettist David Mason in 2012 and currently nearing completion. That such an encompassing overview comes in a tidy hour-long package makes The Ocean of Eternity an all the more attractive proposition.

The participating vocalists and instrumentalists are all clearly attuned to Laitman's sensibility, and consequently artistry of the highest order is achieved. It's worth noting that while both the composer and her daughter-in-law Tze-Wen (Julia) Lin play piano on separate pieces, Laitman's son, pianist Andrew Rosenblum, performs on most of the settings, and splendidly. Five sopranos, a mezzo-soprano, and a baritone appear, and while the material is largely arranged for piano and vocalist, violinist Tarn Travers and soprano saxophonist Michael Couper add distinctive timbral colour to the respective works on which they play.

In the material from Vedem and the title work, Laitman explores material relating to the Holocaust, much as she's done in other works. Whereas the selections from Vedem have to do with boys imprisoned in the Terezin Concentration Camp and the magazine they produced during their incarceration, The Ocean of Eternity is Laitman's four-part setting of a poem by Anne Ranasinghe, a German Jew who survived the Holocaust and later settled in Sri Lanka. Elsewhere, Laitman draws for inspiration from some of her favourite poets, among them Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Dana Gioia. Regardless of the subject matter, the composer's humanism resonates throughout, whether it be exploring America's treatment of immigrants or grappling with the Holocaust.

Adding to the impact of Selections from Vedem Songs is the fact that the texts for its four parts were written by boys imprisoned at the camp; “Memories of Prague,” for example, is based on a poem by Petr Ginz, the editor of the Vedem magazine they created during their stay. The longing expressed in the text finds its natural correlate in the yearning, even anguished tone of the music and the heartfelt expression by soprano Nicole Cabell and Rosenblum's sensitive accompaniment. Startlingly brighter by comparison is “Five,” with it and the remaining two songs, the elegiac “Just a Little Warmth” and memory-laden “Thoughts,” sung by soprano Katie Hannigan with Travers and Lin her partners.

The arias excerpted from the first act of Ludlow bode well for the full opera. As resonant as “The Wind Sighs” is when baritone Daniel Belcher (as the Poet) gives rousing voice to the repeated “Colorado,” it's “Out of the Rockfolds and I Barely Remember” that registers most powerfully when Belcher and Rosenblum are joined by Maureen McKay (as the orphan girl Luisa Mole) for a mesmerizing interweaving of arias, the soprano particularly affecting in presenting Luisa's poignant recollection of her parents. In a captivating move, the three-part Fresh Patterns follows settings of Dickinson's “It's All I Have to Bring Today” and contemporary poet Annie Finch's “Letter for Emily Dickinson” with a concluding song that strikingly blends the two. Consistent with the imaginative design, the first song features Patrice Michaels, the second Alisa Jordheim, and the third, “Fresh Patterns,” both sopranos, with Rosenblum present throughout. The magic arises here, as one might expect, when the voices, first heard separately in the concluding song, entwine gloriously during its second half.

With soprano Cabell giving terrific voice to Gioia's words and Laitman's haunting music, “The Apple Orchard” captivates the moments its opening line, “You won't remember it—the apple orchard,” appears. The Ocean of Eternity also arrests the ear with the sinuous sound of Couper's soprano saxophone before it's joined by soprano Yungee Rhie and pianist ChoEun Lee. In the four poems, Ranasinghe meditates on mortality, memory, and nature, subjects for which Laitman fashions suitably sympathetic music; as heavy as such topics are (“And from our bones / Wild flowers shall grow” is indicative of the tone), the work's lively third part, “The Morning was Blue,” includes moments connoting happiness.

With Rosenblum joining Cabell, Dear Edna sets poems by Millay and three contemporary American poets, Jennifer Reeser, Diane Thiel, and A. E. Stallings, who individually reflect on Millay in different ways. In a particularly engaging gesture, her “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” is paired with Thiel's “Editorial Suggestive (From a 21st Century Editor),” which wryly contemplates how a modern-day editor might have responded to Millay and her writing (“And one more thing—oh, yes—dear Edna, you must also change your name”). On an album whose material is at times dark, Stallings' “After Reading the Biography Savage Beauty” ends matters on a witty and spirited note (“People would flock to my readings—and pay—if I were like Edna St. Vincent Millay”).

June 2022