Frank Morelli: From the Soul
Musica Solis

A greater ambassador for the bassoon would be hard to imagine than Frank Morelli, whose advocacy has done much to legitimize the woodwind as a solo instrument as deserving of the spotlight as violin or cello. With his sixth solo album, he continues that campaign by reminding us of the bassoon's range and multi-dimensionality. The programme is inspired, ranging from a jazz-inflected work by Wynton Marsalis to a poignant meditation on the Holocaust by Lori Laitman. While Morelli's 2024 release An die Musik features works by Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann, From the Soul focuses on material by contemporary composers, Dominick Argento, Jeff Scott, and Nirmali Fenn in addition to the aforementioned two, and helping him present the five works are superb collaborators, pianist Wei-Yi Yang, mezzo-soprano Janna Baty, and the Callisto Quartet.

In keeping with its title, Scott's Elegy for Innocence (2008) is wistful, meditating as it does upon the way hopes are humbled by reality and the hard-won wisdom that accrues. Performed as a duet with Yang, the work opens with a graceful, lullaby-like piano statement before Morelli enters with a beautifully calibrated expression that shows his instrument's capacity for emotional expression. His incisive tone and carefully controlled vibrato lend the bassoon a vocal-like quality before the music takes a darker, even macabre turn and the activity level intensifies. Venturing far beyond its chorale-styled intro, the work moves into jazzier realms as it blossoms in vitality before resolving on a note of triumph. Morelli's virtuosic command is called upon, but the elegy's no empty exercise in grandstanding.

One of the album's highlights is I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1996), the haunting song cycle Laitman created from poetry written by children at the Terezin camp and who later died at Auschwitz; originally scored for solo voice and alto sax, the bassoon treatment was created for Morelli to perform at the 2002 Festival Chamber Music concert in NYC. Like Scott's, Laitman's advances through stages, with in her words the cycle progressing “from feelings of innocence and hope to those of despair and sorrow.” The composer's known for tailoring her music to the text in question, and I Never Saw Another Butterfly exemplifies that approach when each of its six parts musically reinforces the character of the children's words (hear in “The Garden,” for example, how the weaving motion of the bassoon suggests the image of a boy walking along a garden path).

Loneliness and desire permeate “The Butterfly,” which, while sad, nevertheless conveys the hope of a spirit refusing to be quelled. Musically playful by comparison is “Yes, That's the Way Things Are,” whose words are by three children, Kosek, Löwy, and Bachner, writing under the name Koleba; indicative of Laitman's range, the song was fashioned in the style of a Jewish folk song. While despair and grief shadow many of the parts (e.g., the ominously repeating bassoon note in “The Old House” that suggests a bell tolling), there are moments where the resilience of the human spirit and the will to prevail in the face of impossible circumstances are conveyed by the words and music. Apparently Morelli and Baty have performed the cycle many times, and it shows in the authority with which the two deliver their performance, the mezzo-soprano deeply affecting and the bassoonist her sympathetic partner throughout.

Similar to Elegy for Innocence, Argento's “Man with a Paint Box Aria” from the 1971 opera Postcard from Morocco presents an older man's memory of a youthful fantasy whereby an imaginary ship appears in the clouds outside his bedroom window. In place of the anticipated vocalist, however, we have Morelli, whose eloquent bassoon “sings” Argento's poetic rumination with precise attunement to its mood changes and enhanced by accompaniment from Yang. Morelli's jazzy and bluesy sides emerge with his and the Callisto Quartet's rendering of Marsalis's Meeelaan (1999). Originally written for bassoonist Milan Turkovic, the work's cheeky title references the way the composer would greet him, and the movement titles are similarly allusive, with “Blues,” “Tango,” and “Bebop” all capturing Marsalis's expert handling of different styles. Fundamental to the trumpeter's music is swing, and there's no shortage of it in these exquisite renderings. Soloing boldly, Morelli shows himself to be as comfortable in this milieu as in a classical one.

If Meeelaan invites Morelli to emulate saxophone, the album's closing work, Fenn's Prayer (2022), asks the bassoonist to approximate the sound of the duduk, an Armenian double-reed folk instrument. Written for Morelli and appearing here in its debut recording, Prayer was in part inspired by his request that Fenn compose a piece that would evoke the spiritual quality of the Muslim call to prayer, and certainly the ten-minute, piano-accompanied setting exudes the quality of a heartfelt supplication. Adding to the music's arresting character, near its close a “singing bowl” was drawn across the piano's G4 string to produce ghostly glissando effects.

Morelli's accomplishments, by the way, are legion. He's appeared on nearly 200 recordings, is the first bassoonist awarded a doctorate by The Juilliard School, and has taught bassoon at the Yale School of Music for more than three decades. He's currently a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape and has numerous transcriptions to his name as well as the book Stravinsky: Difficult Passages for Bassoon. Indicative of his adventurousness, Morelli recently recorded a jazz album with saxophonist Keith Oxman and was featured on the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's 2001 Grammy-winning Shadow Dances. For one recording to account for all of Morelli's interests would be next to impossible, but From the Soul inarguably succeeds as a representative sampling.

February 2026