Dear Theo - 3 Song Cycles

Product Description

Dear Theo - So Free Am I - Ode to a Nightingale... / Paul Appleby, ténor - Susanna Phillips, soprano - Brett Polegato, baryton - Brian Zeger, piano

Review

...an American songwriter with a knack for matching texts to lyrically generous, harmonically rich music. --New York Times

Ben Moore is an American composer of song cycles, chamber music and of late, opera, well-regarded in the Metropolitan Opera circles. That regard comes from his previous collaborations with Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham, Isabel Leonard, Frederica von Stade, Robert White, Lawrence Brownlee, Nathan Gunn and the darling of Broadway, Audra McDonald. His choice of texts is equally careful and accomplished - John Keats, W.B. Yeats, Anna Wickham, Muriel Rukeyser, Vincent van Gogh and Isaac Bashevis Singer. --Wholenote, June 2014

Moore's setting of W.B. Yeats's dreamy "Lake of Innisfree" is perhaps the composer's most loveable song, and when sung with Appleby's poetic musicality, it is the perfect coda to an album of dreams, explorations and exultations. --Steven Jude Tietjen, Opera News, August 2014