The idea of a bluegrass mass is a good one -- check out a polka mass sometime if you're somewhere in the big crescent running from Buffalo down into Pennsylvania and over through Ohio to Toledo on a Sunday morning. Bluegrass might be thought of as country's classical music, with discipline and technique applied to fresh realizations of traditional forms. There's nothing really wrong with this effort by composer Carol Barnett and librettist Marisha Chamberlain -- the text alternates sections very loosely based on the texts of the Catholic mass with a verse ballad articulating basic Christian tenets. The VocalEssence chorus is the equal of any choir working in the U.S. today, and in the American anthems from Billings to
Eric Whitacre that round out the disc they offer superior performances. The problem is that few bluegrass listeners would recognize the music in the main attraction as bluegrass. There is a bluegrass band called
Monroe Crossing present, but the players seem a little unsure of what to do with the instruments amid rhythms that fluctuate between the free forms of contemporary choral music and simple strumming beats -- the driving forward motion that defines bluegrass, descended from traditional fiddle dance music and enlivened with ragtime and jazz, is completely absent. Nor is there any effort to make use of the distinctive bluegrass vocal quality often termed "high lonesome." There aren't any technical obstacles to including bluegrass-inflected singing or playing in a concert-music context -- check out the music of Michigan composer Evan Chambers, such as the Concerto for fiddle and violin, if you're interested in this kind of thing. But there's very little bluegrass feeling here -- just banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and bass dutifully plunking along.