Songs from Spoon River, Reflections of a Peacemaker,
and Other Vocal Music by Lita Grier
Michelle Areyzaga, soprano; Elizabeth Norman, soprano; Scott Ramsay, tenor; Robert Sims, baritone; Alexander Tall, baritone; Levi Hernandez, baritone; Welz Kauffman, piano; William Billingham, piano; John Goodwin, piano; Chicago Children's Choir / Josephine Lee, conductor; Anne Bach, oboe; Tina Laughlin, percussion
2009 ~ Cedille Records CDR 90000 112
FIVE SONGS FOR CHILDREN
1. Afternoon on a Hill
2. The Seashell
3. Someone
5. The Bluebird
Michelle Areyzaga, soprano; Welz Kauffman, piano
6. Sneezles
Michelle Areyzaga, soprano; Anne Bach, oboe; Tina Laughlin, percussion; William Billingham, piano
FIVE SONGS FROM A SHROPSHIRE LAD
7. I
8. II
9. III
10. IV
11. V
Robert Sims, baritone; William Billingham, piano
TWO SONGS FROM EMILY DICKINSON
12. I
13. II
Michelle Areyzaga, soprano; Welz Kauffman, piano
SONGS FROM SPOON RIVER
14. The Hill (Part I)
15. Sarah Brown
16. Zenas Witt
17. Lucinda Matlock
18. Anne Rutledge
19. Petit the Poet
21. Fiddler Jones
22. Rita Matlock Gruenberg
23. The Hill (Part II)
Elizabeth Norman, soprano; Michelle Areyzaga, soprano; Scott Ramsay, tenor; Alexander Tall, baritone; Levi Hernandez, baritone; Welz Kauffman, piano; William Billingham, piano
REFLECTIONS OF A PEACEMAKER
24. As it was in the Beginning
25. Eternal Role Call
26. The Pirate Song
27. About Living (Part III)
28. I AM
Chicago Children's Choir / Josephine Lee, conductor; John Goodwin, piano
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"CD of the week - Lita Grier: "Songs from Spoon River" (Cedille).
This is a wonderful collection of songs and song cycles spanning the entire career of Chicago composer Grier. Her settings of 10 poems from Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology" (a result of three Ravinia commissions) lend evocative counterforce to their bittersweet sentiments and are beautifully performed by Elizabeth Norman, Michelle Areyzaga and other local singers, with pianists Welz Kauffman and William Billingham furnishing the apt accompaniments to Grier's 2004-09 cycle as well as to the rest of the songs on this excellently recorded disc."
John von Rhein - Chicago Tribune
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"She's also fortunate to have some very fine singers and pianists to present her work on this recording. Sopranos Michelle Areyzaga (who performs the majority of the songs) and Elizabeth Norman are both superb, their technique solid and their voices eminently listenable (and I don't often say this about sopranos!)"
David Vernier - Classics Today
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These musicians also literally caress the songs: it is easy to imagine Areyzaga singing to a group of children sitting in a half-circle before her.
Marvin J. Ward - Classical Voice Of New England
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“Michelle Areyzaga is superb in her faultless diction and, most important, in her fine spirit.
Areyzaga’s light soprano emerges as high contrast in the two Dickinson songs, set while Grier was at UCLA. The two poems are “I cannot live with you” and “I taste a liquor never brewed.” The first receives a porcelain-delicate setting that is shattered by the acerbic harmonies that underpin “And I, could I stand by/And see you freeze.” Particularly impressive in this song is the accompaniment of Welz Kauffman (although Areyzaga’s control in the slow, perilous, unaccompanied final gestures is eminently noteworthy too). The second song operates in high contrast: “I taste a liquor never brewed” is a response to nature, far more intoxicating than any alcohol."
Colin Clarke — (Jan/Feb 2010) of Fanfare Magazine.
