Known to Dreamers
MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN-LEE, ELLIOT MADORE, JONELLE SILLS; STEVEN PHILCOX
CENTREDISCS — CMCCD 32523
RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 2024
Canadian Art Song Project features the contributions of Black Canadian composers and poets
FEBRUARY 2024 IS SET TO BE AN exciting month for music and history education in Canada. Known to Dreamers: Black Voices in Canadian Art Song (Centrediscs), initiated and recorded by the Canadian Art Song Project (CASP), features the contributions of Black Canadian composers and poets writing for a medium often taken for granted amidst the larger spectacle of grand opera. The project offers a rich array of sounds, performances, reflections, and direct experiences, elements which CASP Co-Artistic Director and Managing Director Lawrence Wiliford says highlight art song’s power for “storytelling and connection.”
Included on the album is the by Robert Fleming, with text by African-American writer Owen Dodson. Exploring the life of Jesus Christ through inner dialogue, the cycle was written for and premiered by contralto Maureen Forrester in 1966 in Montreal, and has since been performed and recorded by an array of opera luminaries including Jessye Norman, Judith Forst, and Wallis Giunta. Also featured on are two works by Caribbean-Canadian, Manitoba-based composer-conductor Larry Strachan, “Moths” by James Rolfe, with text by writer André Alexis (whence the album title originates); and by composer-pia-nist-educator Maria Thompson Corley. “It’s a very vulnerable platform,” says Wiliford of art song, “there’s a vulnerability to doing storytelling in song.” The soloists on the album—soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, baritone Elliot Madore, soprano Jonelle Sills—were all keen to engage with this vulnerability, and to recalibrate for a much more intimate if no less powerful form of sung vocal expression, one specific to the idiom of art song itself.
