Reviews

Soprano Del Fionn Sykes
Violinist Gena J. Payne, Pianist Oksana Lutsyshyn
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, March 12, 2017
Review by John Campbell

From 2005-2013, Del Sykes lived in Germany performing as soloist with orchestras, vocal ensembles and TV shows. Her challenge after returning to Tidewater was to readjust her large, powerful voice to recital format.

The recital titled “A Celebration of Women Though Music: Spirituals, Art Songs and Jazz,” included spoken biographies of the composers of each song—all women. She opened with Is there anybody Here Loves My Jesus by Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989) but only after she had sung a spontaneous a cappella This Little Light of Mine. Sung slowly, it set the mood for the vocal displays to come.

Fortunately African American women in the 20th century have created a body of appealing art songs for singers to draw on in recital. Calvary by Betty Jackson King (1928-1994) showcased Ms. Sykes mezzo range supported by a strong piano opening. The word “Calvary” was repeated a number of times, leading to “blood a-flowing, surely he died on Calvary” with dramatic power. My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord was set by Florence B. Price (1888-1953). The first black woman to receive recognition as composer, there are over 300 neo-romantic compositions are in her catalog. Ms. Sykes' abrupt high operatic ending was most effective.

On the program these early songs were listed under arranged spirituals followed by art songs. This convention is an arbitrary division that should be eliminated. When Beethoven or Haydn set English or Scottish text songs they are not called arrangements.

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) set several texts by her life-long friend, the famous Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and we heard I, Too from Three Dream Portraits. Before she sang, Ms. Sykes read Hughes' poem I Dream a World, where Black people are accepted just as people. I, Too speaks of the black servant having to eat in the kitchen when company comes. There she dreams of the day when her beauty will be recognized—a day far in the future. This was followed by The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Here the singer captures the grandeur of the text: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” as Hughes wrote of black people's connection to the pyramids near the Nile River and the singing of the Mississippi. There was an Ivesian lyricism in Ms. Lutsyshyn's piano.

Expanding boundaries into jazz, Ms. Sykes introduced Gina J. Payne, a retired teacher from the Newport News school system. She played In My Solitude by Duke Ellington, a jazz standard made famous by Billy Holiday on Decca Records (1934), as a jazzy improvisation on electric violin. Unfortunately it was ear-splittingly load. Because of the superb acoustics created by the church's barrel vault ceiling, even after Ms. Payne adjusted the sound level it was still an unpleasantly loud experience.

After intermission, Ms. Sykes and Ms. Payne presented an intriguing set from La Voix de Mers (The Voice of the Seas). The composer, Mfa Kera, was born in Madagascar and grew-up in Senegal. Ms Sykes met her in Germany. A recorded sound track by arranger and instrumentalist Reinhard Katemann accompanied the live performers for voice and violin. The composition has seven movements that musically depict major historical events, beginning in Africa before the onset of the slave trade. The voice of Mama Africa (written for a classically trained singer) is the oral story teller expressing pain, suffering, separations, injustice and hope. It is accompanied by strings, keyboard and talking drums.

We heard three sections: Hum Hum Drums, Mama Africa Remembers, which tells of the lost children who were shipped to North America as slaves and Axe Bahia that incorporated many styles. There was a sense of rolling waves of sound with Ms. Sykes' voice floating above it all. Axe Bahia felt Brazilian and African with a rock beat and text of a letter the girl sent to her mother after being enslaved in South America. It became a song of deliverance performed with great passion.

After the concert Ms. Sykes expressed concern that her microphone was not working. I assured her that her natural voice was in perfect balance with the amplified instrumentals in the final set.

Montgomery & Lutsyshyn, International Recitalists
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, September 9, 2018
Review by John Campbell

The performance on Sunday afternoon at Prince of Peace was a reprise of a recital that contralto Kelly Montgomery and pianist Oksana Lutsyshyn performed at the Lviv Organ Hall, Lviv, Ukraine, July 28th where they also gave a master class. Ms. Montgomery stopped in Rome and Munich on her way to meet Ms. Lutsyshyn in Ukraine. The program was titled Music of the Wild, Wild West, after all, the concert was in given in Eastern Europe. The program opened with Ms. Montgomery singing John Stanford Smith's arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner for low voice, followed by Ms. Lutsyshyn's piano rendition of the Ukraine National Anthem.

Then followed White Moon and Joy by Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) from her Five Songs for Contralto. The streaming piano sound is like light in the song White Moon, a love song with one lover wishing that the “flimmering” moonlight will come into the lovers' bedroom tonight. This, and the text of Joy are by poet Carl Sandburg. Here he encourages us to let joy kill us: “Keep away from the little deaths.” Ms. Montgomery's sound was rock solid, without vibrato and inviting.

Ms. Lutsyshyn played two piano solo pieces by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Souvenirs: For Aaron Copland and For Paul Bowles. The second miniature captured the happy, tripping-about-gaily energy of Bowles' own music. With its galloping piano rhythm, When Johnny Comes Marching Home by Patrick Gilmore (1829-1892) was popular in both the North and South during the Civil War. Another marching tune followed: I'll be a Soldier, one of three tunes by Stephen Foster (1826-1864). In I Cannot Sing Tonight the singer explains “because I am sad,” emphasized by the melancholy piano coda. Camptown Races with its slow paced low notes and a trotting rhythm wiped away the melancholy.

Critic and composer Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was showcased in two piano solo miniatures: Persistently Pastoral: Aaron Copland and Souvenir: A Portrait of Paul Bowles. Copland's simple American sound with repetitive chords was followed by a much more complex ghosting effect. Both were brief but the Bowles was unique.

Ms. Montgomery reminded us that no program of American Songs is complete without some African American Spirituals. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (arr. Jean Shackleton) fully engaged her deep, rich contralto sound, followed by Weepin' Mary by Harry T. Burleigh and (Give me That) Old Time Religion, a song with a mile-long pedigree and part of the singer's childhood in Arkansas and this writer's childhood in West Virginia. It first appeared in print in 1873 in a book of Jubilee songs that Charles Davis Tillman transcribed from a live African American performance, though the tune may be earlier and of English folk origin.

The other two selections from her childhood Baptist set were I'll Fly Away by Albert E. Brumley and The Sweetest Gift (A Mother's Smile). Sung in her sweetest, light soprano voice, it is a sentimental Gospel song by James B. Coates (1901-1961), a musically educated white Baptist deacon. This one is new to me and tells the story of a boy gone bad who is in jail when his mother passes away.

Paul Bowles wrote a set called Folk Preludes for solo piano, based on seven American folk songs. These brief, inventive pieces were uncomplicated. Though Oh! Potatoes They Grow Small Over There was a dirge for the Irish potato famine and Kentucky Moonshine was a somber tune. Others were bright and sunny or dance-like.

Ms. Montgomery then delivered three traditional songs: Poor Wayfaring Stranger with a jazzy piano accompaniment; He's Gone Away in contralto vocal range, longing for her lover's return; and Shenandoah, highlighting her precise diction. Ms. Lutsyshyn played two Bowles pieces: La Cuelga that musically says a great deal in a short piece and Sayula with its Mariachi band flavor.

In the closing set the femme-fatal singing actress was turned loose on music from Annie Get Your Gun: Ceremonial Chant, I'm an Indian Too, I've Got the Sun in the Mornin' and finally There's no Business Like Show Business. They wrapped-up the program with the lovely Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas by Menken and Schwartz, giving their European audience a taste of American music and reminding an American one of the riches of our own musical heritage.