On her 1998 debut solo album
Way Back to Paradise, Broadway star
Audra McDonald recorded four musical settings composed by
Ricky Ian Gordon for poems by
Langston Hughes and James Agee. That may have been the inspiration for this album, on which
McDonald,
Judy Blazer,
Darius de Haas,
Adam Guettel and
Dawn Upshaw sing more poems musicalized by
Gordon. (Three of the tracks from
Way Back to Paradise, the
Hughes poems "Dream Variations," "Song for a Dark Girl," and "Daybreak in Alabama," are repeated here.)
Gordon is something of a hybrid composer, not exactly classical, certainly not pop, perhaps leaning toward the musical theater, at least at its artier end. Producer
Tommy Krasker in his liner notes name-checks
Leonard Bernstein,
Marc Blitzstein, and
Stephen Sondheim for the sake of comparison, and those are fair antecedents, at least so far as they indicate
Gordon's aspirations. He chooses a variety of types of poems here, and he treats them in different ways, as do the different performers. The ideal matching remains
McDonald/
Hughes, and there are more of those, "Poor Girl's Ruination/The Dream Keeper," "Love Song for Lucinda" (with
de Haas joining in), and "Joy" (which also features
de Haas, Theresa McCarthy, and
Guettel).
Hughes' liberal sentiments are well expressed by
McDonald, and
Gordon gives them relatively simple music that allows
McDonald room for that expression. He also uses some interesting musical forms, such as the ragtime that comes into "Love Song for Lucinda." He is less effective in conveying the caustic humor of
Dorothy Parker, at least in "The Red Dress," in which opera singer
Upshaw completely ignores
Parker's sarcasm. "Résumé/Wail/Frustration," three
Parker poems about suicide and murder sung by
Blazer, a musical comedy star, and Chris Pedro Trakas, work much better, in part because the singers are interested in the meaning of the words.
Blazer also does well by Agee's "I'm Open All Night." Other songs sound sub-operatic and merely pedestrian, the poems mere excuses for the musical exercises. Thus, the album on the whole is uneven, however nobly intended and expertly performed. ~ William Ruhlmann