This album's title,
The Billy Collins Suite: Songs Inspired by His Poetry, is something of a misnomer since only two of the works are sung settings of his poetry and the other three use a narrator with chamber ensemble. It's also hard to experience the work of the five composers as a suite since with their disparate idioms and varied instrumental ensembles the sections have nothing in common except using, in some way, the poetry of
Billy Collins.
Collins, whom the New York Times has called the most popular poet in America and who has served as the national poet laureate, is the kind of evocative, provocative, and frequently witty writer who would naturally attract the affection and stir the imagination of composers, so it's easy to understand the impetus behind this project. The quality of the resulting compositions is so varied, though, that the album as a whole can't be called a success.
Vivian Fung's setting of three poems for narrator, clarinet, cello, and piano is the most effective and satisfying piece here because the music is imaginative and cleverly put together, the voice is well integrated (and even used instrumentally to some extent), and the poems are thematically related. The text setting in
Stacy Garrop's Ars Poetica for mezzo-soprano and piano trio is clumsy and the music adds little to the texts. Lita Grier's two poems for baritone, clarinet, and piano are technically more proficient, but the earnest mood, particularly in "Forgetfulness," one of
Collins' wittiest poems, seems tone-deaf to the poet's sense of whimsy. The two other works for narrator and ensemble,
Pierre Jalbert's The Invention of the Saxophone and Zhou Tian's Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems, have musical integrity and interest, but the narration seems extraneous and unintegrated, and both pieces would be stronger without it. The performances, by participants in Chicago's Music in the Loft series, are executed with conviction and skill.