A Haven of Art Songs

Would That Love Were Enough: Music of Lee R. Kesselman Haven

(Lindsey Kesselman, soprano. Kimberly Cole Luevano, clarinet. Midori Koga, piano.) Allison Rich, cello. Blue Griffin Records 675Total Time:  67:05 Recording:   ****/**** Performance: ****/****

In this new release form the chamber group, Haven, we are treated to music by composer Lee Kesselman.  Kesselman was Director of Choral Activities at the College of DuPage in Illinois until 2022 and is known for a variety of choral pieces and other works for voice.  This is a collection of art songs in chamber settings that create a diverse exploration of modern approaches to text setting.

The album is bookended by two diverse pieces.  It opens with a moving setting of the Japanese folksong, Sakura (2018) which features some beautiful writing for clarinet against the lyric vocal line.  It concludes with an encore of sorts in an arrangement of the Gershwin tune, I’ll Build A Stairway to Paradise.

Two larger song cycles also frame self-contained pieces.  The first of the larger works is Ashes & Dreams (2016) which continues exploration of Japanese inspiration with the setting of haiku and waka by Japanese poets.  Here the piano has a broader palette to explore with some interesting interactions with clarinet again.  There are a variety of vocal techniques applied to accent textual ideas and the music too moves through more tonal to slightly more dissonant realms.  Across the eight brief settings, are some rather fascinating moments where disjunct writing creates a great unsettled atmosphere against these intricate splashes of piano or clarinet lines.  The title of the album (2021) is the other four-movement cycle here based on Kesselman’s own texts.  Here he reflects on different stages of a relationship across the movements.

At the center are three shorter pieces where Kesselman explores texts by other writers/poets.  First is a reimagination of a piece from Handel’s Giulio Cesare (“Piangero”) which switches in cello for a nice aural change and adds a deeper richness.  It is followed by a setting of a text from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (“Make Me a Willow Cabin”, 2014) and lyrics by James Tucker (“How I Hate This Room”, 2007).  The last is from an opera-in-progress.  These pieces give further examples of Kesselman’s reimagining of previous material or settings of text and crafting unique and compelling versions of his own.  Switching in the cello here helps add a new color and nice contrast to the other pieces on the release.

The works on the album were composed for Haven and they provide some truly excellent performances here.  Shifts in color are handled quite well in the clarinet lines, often moving between close two-note motives and bursts of slight technical requirements.  The piano line helps move us through well harmonically which can enhance the notes assigned in the accompanying clarinet.  It is also interesting how Kesselman will shift these ideas between the instruments adding to further enhancement of the text, or dramatic flair of the music.  The vocal writing is equally stunning and lays well within the range here of soprano Lindsay Kesselman who has a wonderful pure tone. 

There are some brief notes in the accompanying booklet and texts for the songs are also included.  The engineers have captured the richness of Kesselman’s music well and while the voice is front and center, the other accompanying instruments provide an extra depth to the ambient space.  The result is a rather compelling collection of new music which draws the listener in with its more accessible styles and then provides slight contemporary challenges in the necessary dissonances that occur across the pieces here to add dramatic intent.  The album presents an accessible and quite engaging program with excellent performances.