Duo Sureño: Duo Sureño
Teal Music Productions

Soprano Nancy King and classical guitarist Robert Nathanson follow their 2023 release Continuum with a splendid sequel, the two again augmented by guest artists Livia Sellin on violin and Laurent Estoppey on saxophone. Like Continuum, the duo's self-titled release appears on Teal Music Productions, a student-run label within the Department of Music at The University of North Carolina Wilmington where both King and Nathanson teach, she the Music Department Chair and he a Professor of Music. Their individual credits are extensive, and the bond the two share as performers is deep, their collaboration as Duo Sureño extending back to 1999.

The duo's avowed commitment to new music is upheld by the latest release in featuring premiere recordings of works by Christopher Gable, Maurizio Guerandi, David Leisner, and William Grosvenor Neil. The word continuum applies here in a different sense, given that the earlier album also includes pieces by the latter two figures. Six works are presented, two of them multi-part and three by Guerandi, one featuring vocals and the others instrumentals. His lovely She opens the recording with a lyrical reverie set to evocative text by poet, spoken-word artist, and educator Jim Cohn and taken from his Songs of Unreason. Estoppey joins King and Nathanson on this sensitively articulated performance, his soprano saxophone a pleasing complement to their guitar and voice. Elsewhere, Guerandi's Wind Sway pairs Estoppey and Nathanson in a stirring duet, while the entrancing pastoral-folk Crystal features the guitarist alone.

Composed in 2023, As Wind in Shells sets five poems by Rosemary Thomas (1901-61) to music by Leisner, like Nathanson a renowned guitarist. Accompanying Duo Sureño for her only appearance on the album, Sellin's resonant violin is critical to the work's impact. After the lilting, nostalgia-laden “Evening” establishes the work's tone, “Early Morning Dream” stands out for the trio's earnest reading of the piece but also Sellin's simulation of a Chinese pheasant's cry. As ear-catching is the evocation of banjo by guitar and violin in “Elegy for a Nephew” and its eventual transition into a wail of despair over the relative's drowning. Music reinforces words during “Ballad of Sleep” when violin arcs like the flying bird watched by the protagonist from bed.

For From A Litany, Grosvenor Neil casts Mark Strand's words to music, the poem a series of rather Whitman-esque lines of praise (“I praise the clouds that are like lungs of light / I praise the owl that wants to inhabit me and the hawk that does not …”). In doing so, Strand expresses affection for the secular, sensorial world that's enriched his existence but also gradually shifts away from the world outside to the one within. With Estoppey again weaving saxophone into the intricate coupling of Duo Sureño's voice and guitar, the passionate work holds the attention for its full nine-minute running time.

For Hens - Their Diseases and Cure, Gable turned to texts by Nancy Luce, who died at Martha's Vineyard in 1890. The words in the work's five parts aren't conventional poetry but instead a potpourri of advice on hen care, religious supplication, and musings on human sin. The work's character is clearly established by the hectoring “Introduction” and its admonition that humans should “understand how to raise up sick hens to health.” Whereas well-intentioned “Remedies” are served up to nurse ill-suffering hens back to health, “Birds” rhapsodizes over “dear little hens,” “Epitaphs” honours their passing with tender affection, and “Prayer” delivers a impassioned plea to God on behalf of “dear little hens, and other dumb creatures.”

February 2026