Michael Daugherty: Blue Electra
Naxos

With multiple Grammy awards to his name and adoring supporters fervently embracing his work, American classical composer Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) occupies an admired place in the contemporary music world. He's one of those rare artists who by natural inclination creates material that's wholly accessible but with no compromise to its quality or integrity. The three works on his latest release, all of them world premiere recordings, check those boxes in being meticulously crafted, conceptually inspired, and stirringly melodic. It comes as no surprise, then, that Daugherty is one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded composers on today's international concert music scene. He and his fellow American composer Peter Boyer more follow in the footsteps of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland than avant-gardists located at the fringes.

Daugherty clearly benefited from the esteemed teachers with whom he studied at Yale (Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds), IRCAM (Pierre Boulez), the Paris Conservatory (Betsy Jolas), and in Hamburg (György Ligeti). A professor of composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance since 1991, Daugherty has done the same for his own students as others did for him. The impression one forms of his work is, of course, critically influenced by the calibre of the performers presenting it, and in that regard he is fortunate indeed. Under the assured hand of conductor David Alan Miller, the Albany Symphony delivers sterling renditions of the aviation-related pieces, the first of which, Blue Electra, is distinguished even more by a stunning performance by violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, who commissioned the work and premiered it in 2022. It makes the strongest impression, but the other two, Last Dance at the Surf (2021) and To the New World (2019), reward the attention too.

Each work draws for inspiration from pivotal historical figures and events, Blue Electra from Amelia Earhart (1897–1937), who vanished while flying her "Electra" airplane over the Pacific Ocean, Last Dance at the Surf alluding to the Clear Lake, Iowa-located Surf Ballroom where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper performed before dying in a 1959 plane crash, and To the New World written to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and Neil Armstrong's moon walk on July 20, 1969.

The four movements in Blue Electra highlight key moments in Earhart's life, with the violin concerto initiated by “Courage (1928),” a regal musical reflection on a poem she wrote before her first transatlantic flight. Whether she's emoting lyrically or sprinting at high-velocity, Meyers' phenomenal wizardry is a marvel to behold. The beauty of her tone and articulation elevates the dramatic opening movement, and her playing in the other parts is no less poised. For “Paris (1932),” Daugherty imagined Earhart as a guest of honour at a high-society “Hot Jazz” soirée in the City of Lights, and the high spirits and jazz-swing feel of the material dazzles with Grappelli-like élan. After that boisterous episode, the work assume a dreamier, at moments melancholy tone during “From an Airplane (1921)” before concluding with the dynamic “Last Flight (1937),” which, of course, refers to Earhart's ill-fated attempt to become the first woman to fly around the globe and ends abruptly as if suggesting the plane's disappearance. Throughout the twenty-six-minute performance, trills, double stops, and cadenzas are executed with pinpoint precision, Daugherty's concerto a terrific showcase for Meyers' talents.

Wisely, the composer eschews cheap references to the late trio of musicians in his Last Dance at the Surf, choosing instead to allude to the historical locale and tragedy with side-long glances and a muscular, quasi-“rock” feel. Beginning brightly with woodblocks, woodwinds, and syncopated rhythms, the work progresses from its propulsive opening to a slower central episode oozing portent in anticipation of the tragedy to come. Structured as a single-movement work lasting sixteen minutes, Last Dance at the Surf advances through a series of episodes and contrasting thematic material, including a graceful chorale and a lovely, sleigh bells-punctuated evocation, before accelerating towards its full-force end.

The three-part To the New World includes several tributes to Armstrong, two being the inclusion of a a solo euphonium, his instrument in college, in the score and the incorporation of the words he uttered upon touching down on the moon's surface, “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” (an audio recording of John F. Kennedy's famous “We choose to go the Moon!” also surfaces). The addition of wordless vocalizing by soprano Elissa Johnston adds an ethereal quality to the outer space-centred material. In its opening movement, “Moonrise,” Daugherty attempts to express the wonderment the Apollo 11 astronauts would have felt in viewing the earth from space and anticipating their landing on the moon's surface. As a reminder of the dangers the mission entailed, the composer weaves ominous chords and atonal gestures into the writing. In “One Small Step,” Daugherty cleverly transcribes Armstrong's famous phrase into a syncopated rhythmic pattern that's initially delivered by the marimba and then distributed to other instruments and the singer. In keeping with the successful completion of the mission, the climactic “Splashdown” is naturally celebratory, rousing, and brash, and to honour the mission a dance rhythm built from a pattern of eleven beats appears.

April 2025