marlene mountain
reviews of mm
2002

 

Mark Winges, as
composer-in-residence for Robert Geary’s San Francisco Chamber
Singers, had access to that exceptional group as well as to Geary’s
Piedmont (youth) Choirs for the compositions recorded on the CD freed
from words ( Innova 573 [American Composers Forum]).

The CD includes three sets of “Haiku Settings,” (1996) each starting with
the same haiku by Marlene Mountain. The voice parts fly around each
other, and the SF Chamber Singers draw out vowel sounds, attenuate
single words, phrases, and phase back and forth in portamento, with
much sliding and bending of notes. There’s nothing of haiku brevity about
the musical settings, though haiku proportions, the pattern of syllables,
seems to be a governing factor. Each setting of three haiku becomes
successively more word free and fanciful than the one before.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical
Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and
before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California,
Berkeley.)
©2002 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved

review werner reichhold lynx 28:1 february 2003

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