Graham Rickson, December Celebration
This beautifully recorded anthology, sweetly performed by the Californian Volti Chorus under Dawn Harms, is a mixed bag, though the high spots are memorable. There's little information given about the background to the disc, other than Pentatone stating that “Gordon Getty inspired us with his composition of delightful new carols to invite a group of American composers to celebrate the season in music.” Getty's four secular carols are indeed delightful, each one short and witty. "Candles on the Tree" is superb, its list of pre-Christmas tasks set to insistent, catchy music. It's hard to resist a number which rhymes cream cheese, chick peas and “someone find the mint, please.”
Joshua Kosman, Gretchen to Faust
Also on that program was the world premiere of Gordon Getty's “Gretchen to Faust,” a short vocal scene drawn from Goethe that stands as a poignant memorial to his son Andrew. Soprano Lisa Delan infused the solo part with the requisite tenderness.
John Sullivan, Usher House
Although Getty’s one-act riff on Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tale “The Fall of the House of Usher” had moments of eeriness, the production was more muddled than macabre, with a couple of plot twists thrown in by Getty that complicated the already arcane Poe original (in which a deranged brother obsesses about his sister’s disease to a visiting friend, who deduces that she has been entombed alive, wittingly or un-). Baritone Brian Mulligan made a valiant stab at imbuing the role of Roderick Usher with some morbid and ominous shadings, although Getty’s absurdly unpoetic libretto and amateurish score do not at all enable Mulligan’s efforts. As the narrator (a.k.a. Poe), tenor Jason Bridges struggled to keep the odd melodies (which zigzag between influences, at once Shostakovich and Glass) from turning sour. As Doctor Primus, a “man of science” (and Getty’s attempt to enrich the story with a new character), Anthony Reed overplayed the sinister shadings of his role to the point of satire. (Perhaps he was onto something…). The role of Roderick’s sister, Madeline, was adequately sung (mostly offstage) by Jacqueline Piccolino; the onstage double was danced, effectively enough, by Jamielyn Duggan, although she was subject to Getty’s fervid plot twists and director David Pountney’s inability to restrain himself whenever dramatic emphasis could be exploded into histrionics.
Charles Tiee, Usher House
Getty’s music is sparse, creepy and chromatic. The texture is also generally thin, only involving at most two musical lines at a time. Getty mainly constructs his opera out of dialogue between the characters. There are very few real melodies in all this back and forth.
“Where Is My Lady?” is the one bona fide aria of Getty’s work. Sung by tenor Jason Bridges in this production, this ballad about the beauty and grace of Madeline Usher, one of the two siblings at the heart of Poe’s story, is sweet, and Bridges makes the most of it.
Benjamin Ivry, Piano Pieces
A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory, where he studied with Sol Joseph (1912-2002), Getty has stuck to a musical language akin to middling Northern European ballet scores circa 1840. Determinedly retro and pale, his works are the aural equivalent of Prince Charles’s watercolour landscapes.
Defiantly unserious and inconsequential...Getty has created music that can dither in slower works, while up-tempo efforts tend to be merry jigs. Like tycoons in Depression-era Hollywood films whose sour stomachs can only tolerate a diet of digestive biscuits and milk, Getty has opted for musical pablum which, although mildly inoffensive, can ultimately be cloying. The patriotically energised Raise the Colors appears a conscious decision to celebrate life...
The American virtuoso Conrad Tao, still in his teens, can play anything with distinction and gives evocative and sympathetic renditions, like a young Frans Hals creating a dashing portrait of some inherently uninteresting burghers.