Grant Gershon

Review: The acclaimed Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon, brings us the music of Phillip Glass and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Featured is Itaipu by Glass, an ecstatic piece framing the ancient folklore of South America's Guarani Indians against a massive hydroelectric dam at Itaipu on the Brazil/Paraguay border. "Itaipu" is divided into four parts, "Mato Grosso," "The Lake," "The Dam" and "To The Sea." Also featured is the world premiere recording of Salonen's "Two Songs to Poems of Ann Jaderlund." The composer's vision of love as described in these poems is dynamic, richly romantic and enthralling - a tour de force of the sonic capabilities of the 111-strong chorus. Cutting-edge choral music, orchestrally accompanied, stunning and magnificent.

Songlist: Itaipu (1989):, Mato Grosso, The Lake, The Dam, To the Sea, Two Songs to Poems of Ann Jaderlund (2000), -Djupt i rummet, -Kyss min mun

Review: Nico Muhly is one of the brightest and most promising American composers to emerge in the early 21st century. He was born in 1981 and wrote the choral pieces recorded here in his early to mid-twenties. As a child he sang in men and boys choirs, so the classics of the English choral repertoire from the Renaissance to the present had a formative impact on his musical thinking, and that deep familiarity is demonstrated in the fluency of his choral writing. These are exceptionally appealing new settings of texts that are mostly familiar -- the Mass, Magnificat, and Nunc dimittis -- as well as several more obscure texts and a secular set using Whitman. Bright Mass with Canons is one of Muhly's most frequently performed works, and rightly so. The piece shows his mastery of both contemporary choral writing and the tight canonic procedures of composers like Tallis and Taverner. It is bright in its clarity and the mood of openness and vitality that it emanates, and in the inventive sparkle of the quirky organ accompaniment. The motet Senex puerem portabat is hugely impressive, with an urgently yearning opening that builds to a wildly ecstatic climax. The remaining works are also appealing and expertly crafted, but for the most part lack the distinctiveness and focus of the mass or the motet. The text setting is always exemplary, but some of the pieces sound like the music is driven only by the text, without meaningful larger musical structures holding them coherently together. Like so many American composers who came after the ascendency of minimalism and who write in an essentially tonal idiom, Muhly grapples (but perhaps doesn't grapple forcefully enough) with the long shadows of Steve Reich and John Adams. It's too easy to hear the sonorities and figurations of Reich's The Desert Music and Adams' Klinghoffer choruses in some of these pieces. Nonetheless, Muhly's achievement is impressive and he has plenty of time to develop a distinctive individual voice. The Los Angeles Master Chorale, led by Grant Gershon and joined on one track by the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, sings passionately and with great commitment. The fresh youthfulness of their sound is an ideal match for the energy of Muhly's music. The pieces are accompanied by various forces, including organ, percussion, brass, and strings. Decca's sound is clean, clear, and warm, with excellent balance.

Songlist: Bright Mass With Canons- Part I, Bright Mass With Canons - Part II, Bright Mass With Canons - Part III, Bright Mass With Canons - Part IV, First Service (Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis), Senex Puerum Portabat, A Good Understanding, Expecting The Main Things From You

Review: Itaipu is a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra set to a Guarani text. Itaipu is the world's largest dam located on the border between Paraguay and Brazil. The piece is cast in four movements: Mato Grosso, The Lake, The Dam, To the Sea. The piece is part of the composer's interest Brazil, but also in indigenous cultures of the Americas which continues to this day. Commissioned and written for the Quebec Festival 1534-1984, Three Songs for Chorus a Cappella presents three pieces set to poems by three different North American poets. The first song, There are Some Men, is by singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen (whose poetry was later the basis of an evening length song-cycle by Glass titled Book of Longing.) The second song, Quand les Hommes vivront d'Amour, by singer-songwriter/poet/artist Raymond Levesque is a wish for peace and happiness through love. The third song, Pierre de Soleil, by poet Octavio Paz is mediation on existential selflessness ("les autres qui me donnent l'existence.")

Songlist: Mato Grosso, The Lake, The Dam, To The Sea, There Are Some Men, Quand Les Hommes Vivront d'Amour, Pieere de Soleil

Review: Steve Reich recalls the approach and sound of some of his most celebrated early work - groundbreaking repertoire like The Desert Music, Tehillim,, and Music For 18 Musicians - while creating vital, spiritually stirring new music for right now. The four-movement title piece, written for voices and live instruments and performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, premiered at the Walt Disney Concert Hall to extraordinary reviews. Steve Reich recently was hailed as "America's greatest living composer." (The Village Voice), "the most original musical thinker of our time" (The New Yorker), and "among the great composers of the century" (The New York Times).

Songlist: You are wherever your thoughts are, Shiviti Hashem L'negdi (I Place the Eternal Before Me), Explanations Come To An End Somewhere, Ehmor m'aht, v'ahsay harbay (Say little and do much), Cello Counterpoint