Julia Perry & Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson: American Counterpoints
Bright Shiny Things

Counterpoint typically refers to the artful interweaving of patterns within a composition to generate an aesthetically satisfying result. In this case, the term refers to the cumulative impact of co-presenting works by African American composers Julia Perry (1924-79) and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004). Though both achieved success during their lifetimes, their work has in the years since their passing suffered from neglect and, like the output of many an artist, would be vulnerable to vanishing altogether were it not for those who re-discover it and champion its virtues. On this splendid recording, violinist Curtis Stewart and Experiential Orchestra Music Director James Blachly make compelling cases on behalf of the composers and the enduring value of the work they produced.

In featuring four pieces by her and two by him, American Counterpoints gives the edge to Perry, and the recording doesn't suffer as a result. Both composers are beneficiaries of the release, but her material in particular argues for her rightful place on the classical stage. In addition to celebrating her centenary, the album presents the world premiere recording of her Concerto for Violin and Orchestra as well as her Prelude for Strings, Symphony in One Movement for Violas and Basses, and Ye, Who Seek the Truth. Perkinson's represented by Louisiana Blues Strut and Sinfonietta No. 1; rounding out the release is an electronic collage credited to Stewart, We Who Seek, that one might treat as a novelty or bonus track.

The project originated when Blachly, who grew up with Stewart in NYC and had worked with him in different contexts, was mulling over possible collaborators for a performance of Perry's violin concerto and thought of the violinist. That partnership resulted in a late 2022 concert that began, as the album does, with Louisiana Blues Strut and other works by Perkinson and Perry. The show was received so enthusiastically, Blachly and Stewart knew they had to take things to the next step and document the project with a recording.

To provide context and perspective, a few words about the composers are needed before addressing their works. The Kentucky-born Perry attended Westminster College where she studied voice, piano, and composition and in the ‘40s earned her bachelor's and master's degrees. As she was receiving recognition for her compositions and musical abilities, she started teaching in Virginia at the then-named Hampton Institute (today Hampton University) where she taught voice, theory, orchestration, and composition, arranged spirituals, and wrote pieces of her own. During the ‘50s, she continued her studies, first at Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center and then, thanks to two Guggenheim Fellowships, with Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Returning stateside, she gave herself to writing, teaching, and lecturing before the setting in of mental and health challenges in the ‘60s. When Perry, who never married and had no children, died in 1979, many of her compositions went missing or were left in manuscript form.

Born in Manhattan, Perkinson's life followed a rather different path. He showed early musical promise and eventually became a composition major at the Manhattan School of Music; he later studied at Princeton University and spent three years in the Netherlands studying conducting. He became a go-to figure in the music industry and worked with artists such as Marvin Gaye, Lou Rawls, Max Roach, and Harry Belafonte; he also composed scores for stage, film, and television, and wrote the theme songs for the TV shows Get Christie Love! and Room 222. In 1965, he co-founded the Symphony of the New World, which he conducted for five years, and taught at various institutions, including Indiana University. While a compilation album of his music was released a year after his death, Perkinson's music is today little known.

Like the concert, American Counterpoints starts with the blues-drench Louisiana Blues Strut, described by Stewart as “a tour-de-force in the ‘Black Folk' of classical music” and performed by him in a wildly audacious unaccompanied rendition. The tone shifts with the advent of Perry's Prelude for Strings, a gorgeous and transporting piece performed in a string arrangement by violinist Roger Zahab of her Prelude for Piano. Written when he was twenty-two, Perkinson's three-movement Sinfonietta No. 1 is a remarkably sophisticated work by someone so young. Rich in counterpoint and adventurous harmonic gestures, the material draws from baroque and jazz but blends them into a highly personalized expression. While the energized allegros that open and close it are attention-getting, the central “Largo” impresses even more for its poignancy, something the strings of the Experiential Orchestra amplify beautifully.

After its furious third movement, the focus returns to Perry, whose action-packed Symphony in One Movement for Violas and Basses gives the stage to instruments rarely spotlighted together and whose psalm setting Ye, Who Seek the Truth (in an arrangement by Jannina Norpoth) exudes an endearing, Copland-like tenderness. Spread across twenty-three minutes and featuring seventeen time changes, her six-movement Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1963-1968, rev. 1977) begins with a bold unaccompanied violin improvisation for forty-eight measures before the soloist's gradually joined by woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion. The scope and duration of the piece allow for the full flowering of Perry's imagination, an accomplishment that's rendered even more impressive when the fact that all of this remarkable work's music derives from just two contrasting intervals is taken into consideration. The opening and closing cadenzas by Stewart are jaw-dropping too.

April 2024