These "Voices of the Earth" are contemporary Mexican composers, and soprano
Irasema Terrazas gives them a valuable platform; with the exception of Samuel Zyman, who has been active as a faculty member at the Juilliard School in New York, they are not well known outside Mexico. The diversity of the group is impressive, as is the malleability of
Terrazas' instrument when it turns to new material: the basic sound of her voice is ravishing, and she adapts it equally well to the eclectic title work by Eduardo Gamboa with its Arab-inflected middle song of three, to the guitar-accompanied Por siempre Sabines, which tend toward vernacular musical language, to Zyman's dense, introspective Solamente sola, to the melancholy Canción de ausencia of Isaac Saúl, and to the Buddhist-oriented Cuatro piezas devocionales of Kovindu (aka, Alejandro Velasco). This last set of "devotional pieces," which perhaps show the influence of
Philip Glass, are unusual indeed. They have something of an
Yma Sumac quality in
Terrazas' reading, which is not a bad thing! And there are unexpected turns in all the other pieces.
A major flaw of this release is its omission of texts. Given the strong emphasis the artist and the booklet notes lay on the poetry involved, it's a real shame that only those with the ability to understand sung, poetic Spanish will really be in on the action. Thumbs down on this unwise decision, especially since the producers found room for two lavish pages promoting the label's website, one of them featuring a young woman in shorts and a sports bra.