Andrew Garland: El Rebelde
Art Song Colorado

It's easy to understand the appeal Gabriela Lena Frank's Cantos de Cifar y el Mar Dulce (Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea) would have for baritone Andrew Garland when the work involves many daring displays of vocal dexterity and emotional expression. Accompanied by pianist Jeremy Reger, Garland delivers a stellar performance of the piece in its world premiere recording and complements it with readings of two other Frank works, Las Cinco Lunas de Lorca (The Five Moons of Lorca) and Cuatro Canciones Andinas (Four Andean Songs), and Shostakovich's Spanish Songs. While the composers come from very different backgrounds, El Rebelde (The Rebel) shows how both refract Spanish songcraft through the prism of their respective writing styles.

Garland, a voice faculty instructor at the University of Colorado, lists “driving rhythms, the jazz harmonies, the non-classical vocal techniques, the Spanish language, [and] the high F#s and Gs” as distinguishing aspects of Cantos de Cifar y el Mar Dulce. As that characterization suggests, Frank's is a very personalized music that isn't afraid to boldly challenge art song conventions. She was born in California in 1972 to a mother and father of Peruvian/Chinese and Lithuanian/Jewish ancestry, respectively, and consciously explores that multi-cultural heritage in her work. In the eight-part Cantos de Cifar y el Mar Dulce, texts by Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra describe the adventures of a harp-playing mariner exploring the waters of Lake Nicaragua.

The boldness of Frank's vision is present the moment “El nacimiento de Cifar” initiates the album with a series of dramatic vocal flourishes, Garland's robust voice rising with declamatory power as he recounts the story of Cifar's birth and theatrically speaks the song's closing lines. In “Me diste oh Dios! una hija,” the turbulence of the sea's waters are intimated by Reger's rolling backdrop as Garland punctuates his low register delivery with falsetto. Even more dramatic is “Segune parte: Tomasito, el cuque” for the violence with which its interrogation of the cook Thomas is conducted; the solemn “Tercer parte: El Niño,” by comparison, is sung by an unaccompanied Garland at a near-hush. Here and in the other three performances, Reger excels in his role; Garland is fortunate to have a pianist so attuned to his singing as a partner on the project.

Las Cinco Lunas de Lorca, the second Frank selection, is memorable for the music's cryptic tone but also for augmenting Garland and Reger with tenor Javier Abrue. Unison singing by the two introduces the single-movement, ten-minute piece, whose text by Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz describes in vivid detail Lorca's assassination during the Spanish Civil War. The voices pair up and splinter apart repeatedly, while Reger's piano part provides an ongoing, at times Stravinsky-esque commentary on the action. In contrast to the opening work's focus on a single character, Frank's Cuatro Canciones Andinas features four different ones and in doing so grants the composer even greater latitude. In this work, traditional poetry of the Quechua people is drawn upon, the poems having been collected and translated by Peruvian folklorist José María Arguedas from Quechua to Spanish. The mystery of texts describing a fly-nursing protagonist (“Yo Crio una Mosca”) and the river-bloodied death scene of a young man (“Carnaval de Tambobamba”) is reflected in Frank's portentous creations.

Adding considerably to the sixty-eight-minute release is Garland and Reger's rendering of Shostakovich's Spanish Songs, six settings emblematic of the Russian composer's style and thus valuable for the extra flavour they bring to the recording. Whereas the sorrow of leave-taking is expressed affectingly in “Prashai Granada” (Farewell, Granada) and the pain of romantic yearning in “Chernookaya” (Dark Eyes), far sunnier moods pervade the song of devotion “Zvyozochki” (Starry Eyes) and playful “Ronda” (Round Dance). It was definitely a smart move on Garland's part to take Reger up on his suggestion to include Spanish Songs in the set-list. As different as Frank and Shostakovich are as composers, El Rebelde is all the better for featuring material by both.

October 2022