Eric Sawyer: Civil Disobedience
BMOP/sound

A better fit for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and its conductor Gil Rose than American composer Eric Sawyer (b.1962) would be hard to imagine. The company dedicates itself, after all, to twentieth- and twenty-first-century works, and its distinguished discography includes many releases featuring material by American composers. As its title implies, Civil Disobedience is Sawyer's setting of Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay, but it's merely one of the works the composer has created based on American figures. The release also includes Fantasy Concerto: Concord Conversations, which matches solo instruments to Transcendentalism-related figures, while Sawyer's first recording on the BMOP/sound label, Our American Cousin, presents an exploration of Abraham Lincoln's final evening at the Ford Theatre. Rounding out the new release are two pieces that are hardly secondary to the others, Sawyer's Violin Concerto and his vocal work Ways of Being.

Beyond their involvement, the release features sterling contributions from narrator Aaron Engebreth, violin soloist Emily Bruskin, soprano Kristen Watson and mezzo-soprano Krista River, and Claremont Trio, comprising cellist Julia Bruskin, pianist Andrea Lam, and, again, Emily Bruskin. The four pieces testify to Sawyer's command across multiple idioms, as does his catalog for containing art songs, operas, chamber works, and orchestral music. He's taught at a number of institutions and currently chairs the music department at Amherst College, which he joined in 2002. New York-born and California-raised, Sawyer's a contemporary composer whose music's easy to warm to. In his words, he “marches to [his] own drummer,” and he contentedly accepts that the harmonic music he writes is “similarly distinct from most of the fashions that pop up today.”

As Sawyer emphasizes, Thoreau's essay “Civil Disobedience” was relevant to its time yet in considering the relationship between the individual and the state resonates as forcefully today in its applicability to America's current incarnation. The question it poses—“Should the individual (soloist) challenge the collective (orchestra) or comply and submit?”—extends to the other works too, whether it be a violinist, vocal pair, or trio that's coupling with the larger group. It's a conundrum those associated with the Transcendentalist movement of the early nineteenth century grappled with too in contemplating the rights of the individual.

As artistically satisfying as all four are, it's the 2016 titular work that is perhaps most arresting, in large part due to Sawyer's deft fusion of narration and music. Striking an effective balance, Engebreth is neither too dry nor too theatrical, his inflections thoughtfully calibrated to the text and his delivery circumspect. With the dramatic score taking its cue from the words, the narration advances from a recounting of Thoreau's night in jail for protesting government policies to embittered musings on American injustices and finally the articulation of an idealistic vision that imagines a country committed to justice for all of its citizens (“a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen”). The work's cinematic opening is in its turbulence suggestive of social unease, though things settle down once the narration begins. Orchestral agitation mounts, however, as Thoreau ponders the working “of the machinery of society” and the injustices that accrue from it, but passages of soothing calm emerge too. It's not the first time, of course, narration has paired with orchestral music—think of Copland's Lincoln Portrait, for example, or Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf—but it's rewarding nonetheless.

Opting for a two-movement structure, 2007's Violin Concerto follows an energized opening movement with an introspective one. The usual markers of a solo concerto are otherwise present, including virtuosic writing for the soloist and an extended cadenza. As the soloist, Bruskin is wholly compelling in the jiu-jitsu she engages in with the BMOP. The tone of the florid first movement surprises in embracing a jazzy feel that calls to mind Stravinsky's own flirtations with the genre. Brusk confidently dances across the orchestra with short, staccato phrases, her movements acrobatic and at times furious. The mood shifts with the arrival of the ethereal second movement, the writing of which, according to Sawyer, drew for inspiration from Bruckner's ninth symphony. Harmonics and upper-register tremolos by the soloist amplify the music's mystical quality, but the orchestra's strings do the same in their silken textures and plaintive expressions.

Scored for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and chamber orchestra, Ways of Being (2020) frames two metaphysical songs with three worldly settings; most strikingly, Sawyer didn't set his music to pre-existing poems but instead to ones of his own. Another ear-catching effect is that the vocalists alternate singing texts and vocalise, with the latter intended to function as a kind of “unconscious subtext” to the sung part. The entwining of the voices makes for a mesmerizing result, no better example the lilting “I'd like to be a cloud” for the entrancement it induces as Watson and River emote against the chamber-styled backdrop. A jazzy feel informs “Set your sights” when the soprano backs her partner's words with swinging “scat”-styled vocalise. Sawyer covers a lot of emotional ground in the songs when the heart-wrenching ache of “Give of yourself” is followed by the Broadway-styled dynamism of “She sees you.”

As mentioned, connections are established in Fantasy Concerto: Concord Conversations (2013) between the solo instruments and Transcendentalism-related figures: the violin, Margaret Fuller, editor of the movement's publication The Dial; the cello the reformer Bronson Alcott; and the piano Ralph Waldo Emerson, the movement's leader in the 1840s. Two parts compose the twenty-five-minute setting, the first “The Eyeball - The Dial” taking its title in part from the metaphor of the “transparent eyeball” as described in Emerson's essay “Nature.” A dense field is generated through the interactions of the trio and orchestra, Sawyer careful to ensure the Claremont members are given ample opportunity to impose themselves. A sense of optimism permeates the writing as the movement approaches its end, its expressive tone almost Copland-esque in some moments. Evoking Ives's The Unanswered Question in one part of its title, the second movement, “The Question - The Quest,” exudes romantic idealism during its opening gestures until a jaunty episode featuring solo violin and orchestral bells brings an injection of mechanistic energy that in turn paves the way to the climax.

In liner notes, David E. Schneider provides in-depth accounts of the works that exceeds what space permits here, so any listener hungry for more background info will be well-sated by his contribution. Sawyer's music hardly suffers in its absence, however, as one's time is amply rewarded whether one takes that deeper dive or simply chooses to attend to the music on its own terms. As they consistently do from one release to the next, Rose and the BMOP distinguish themselves in these performances, and Sawyer is clearly fortunate to have such sympathetic interpreters in his corner.

May 2026