“Kathy’s aria, ‘Chips, darling, it’s started’, is a cracker, impassioned and stirring, a three-tissue number. As to Getty’s arrangements of the traditional classics which bring the disc home, the Spiritual ‘Deep River’ takes Moore back to her church roots and is possessed of an inwardness, a deep and abiding weariness, that comes from a very honest place. As does ‘Danny Boy’ – and how else do you sing that but with quiet respect for one of the great tunes?”

“A thought-provoking, timely and ravishingly-sung recital of American art-song from Memphis-born soprano Melody Moore has been on heavy rotation for me this month … Featuring music by Copland, Heggie, Floyd and Getty, this debut solo recital the American spinto soprano is an absolute joy: sensitively captured by Pentatone’s engineers”

Katherine Cooper

"This recording is a calling card for a genuinely exciting and electric voice, solidly gleaming, with the high range of a soprano but fleshed out with dark, mezzo-ish colours and with its voluptuous richness focused into singing of striking directness and clarity."

"The theme continued in the second piece, San Francisco-based composer Gordon Getty’s setting of what he’s said may be his longest original poem, The Old Man in the Night, whose story, an interchange between two men at the opposite ends of their lives, moves from twilight into nighttime, with allusions to “the Huntress Moon.” It’s a score whose musical drama evokes Wagner and demands crisp and clear declaration both instrumental and vocal, the latter challenged by the composer’s tendency toward sustained unison tones. In this regard, and without amplification, the women of the Festival Napa Valley Volti Chorale, under chorus master Robert Geary, fared better than the somewhat muted men. Conductor Joel Revzen perfectly paced and balanced the Festival Orchestra Napa through Getty’s setting of clarion horns and moody strings against the singers’ gravitas."