Jeff Kaliss: Youth Chorus Demonstrates Music’s Power at Festival Napa Valley
The liveliness lingered and expanded through five sections from Gordon Getty’s Young America (2004, recorded a year later on Pentatone). Several of the performing boys had appeared as Brookfield School students in Getty’s 2021 filmed opera, Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The composer’s trademark quizzically chromatic reshapings of expected melodic movement were engagingly conveyed by this endemically extroverted ensemble, its tonality true through the alternative harmonizations, interestingly structured as a sort of double duet in the “Heather Mary” section, a pair of girls “addressing” a pair of the boys. With one exception, Getty also penned the lyrics to these sections, including the brief personal recollection “My Uncle’s House,” playfully evoked by the young singers.
For “Daughter of Asheville,” violinist Emma Hathaway stepped out to accompany coupled choristers waltzing and singing in 6/8 time, this composer’s tangy melodies and occasional open-fifth voicings painting a pretty picture of young romance. His years matching the 88 chromatic steps of a keyboard, Getty rose from his place to smilingly acknowledge the sustained approbation from his fellow audience members after the finish of his fun setting of Stephen Vincent Benét’s “When Daniel Boone Goes by at Night.”
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Joanne Sydney Lessner: Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Composer/librettist Getty hews closely to the book, adding color and depth particularly where Kathie is concerned. The score is traditional and tonal, with recitatives and arias, soaring choral anthems, and a predilection for heroic high notes.
Jeff Kaliss: Mr. Chips Makes a Winning Transition to Opera in a New Film San Francisco Classical Voice
The scene of Kathie’s death in childbirth, coming as it does relatively early in the work, is a test of all creative elements, and it’s successfully passed. Director of photography Steven Condiotti, here and elsewhere, enhances the drama with artful closeups as Breckenridge, on Kathie’s deathbed, compellingly carries the music and lyrics as close as they will come to traditional tragic aria. Getty gives her in this scene a poetic expression of her inherent, persistent wit and affection, his composition dramatically dynamic but never maudlin. Equally affecting is the ensuing scene of Chips on a lonely trek after losing Kathie, the movie letting Granner intone in a plaintive musical voiceover. Camera pans and dollies allow for a kinetic momentum throughout the work, difficult to achieve in a staged opera.
…The final scene offers an external aerial shot of the collection of buildings where internal scenes are set and a revival of significant characters, including the boys of the school, collectively projected on the school’s walls and windows. Here’s a capping confirmation that movie magic has, in several senses, elicited the timelessness in this tale, helping to extend it beyond the conventions of both book and opera. But the tale is also very well served by some of Getty’s most appealing orchestration and setting for voice to date, clearly inspired by the subject matter and its messages of good will and redemption.
Tiina Kiik: Primavera II: the rabbits – Matt Haimovitz
It is so fascinating to hear each composer’s own musical perception of the visuals. For example, Missy Mazzoli’s Beyond the Order of Things (after Josquin) has a contemporary orchestral storytelling sound with rhythms, pitch slides, fast runs and sudden atonal held notes. Tomeka Reid’s energetic Volplaning is an intense response to the paintings. Sudden loud single-line phrases and rhythmic detached notes add to the running and bouncing rabbit sensibility. Gordon Getty’s Spring Song is a slow, calming Romantic-style-influenced work, clocking in under the two-minute mark. Plucks, repeated notes and upbeat rock strings have the rabbits bopping in a bar in David Balakrishnan’s Theme and Variants.
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Susan Hall: Gordon Getty Premiers a New Opera in New York Berkshire Fine Arts
Indeed, one of the best things about Chips is that Getty has concentrated on telling his story, and hasn't let arias intrude. Yet Chips has some beautiful moments in song. Granner succeeds in creating a correct character who is reserved and charming at the same time.
The orchestration was recorded first. It is particularly rich and underscores the simpler lines sung as characters tell the story.
Read more: Susan Hall: Gordon Getty Premiers a New Opera in New York Berkshire Fine Arts