STRANGER:
WORKS FOR TENOR BY NICO MUHLY
with Reginald Mobley, countertenor
Lisa Kaplan, piano
Brooklyn Rider
Colin Jacobsen, violin
The Knights | Eric Jacobsen, conductor
Avie Records
2023 GRAMMY AWARD NOMINEE:
BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM
ABOUT THE ALBUM
Nico Muhly is one of today’s most sought-after composers. This album comprises world premiere recordings of three of the composer’s major works: Impossible Things for tenor, solo violin and orchestra; Lorne Ys My Likinge for countertenor, tenor and piano; and Stranger for tenor and string quartet.
A song cycle exploring the American immigrant experience, the title work was expressly written for Phan, who gave its acclaimed world premiere performance two years ago with Brooklyn Rider in January 2020 as part of his Emerging Voices project at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. For Stranger, Muhly juxtaposes settings of accounts of immigration through Ellis Island with those of texts protesting the United States’ Chinese Exclusion policies of the late-19th century. Phan describes his encounters with Muhly’s music as being both “artistically and personally transformative,” and recalls the Stranger’s premiere as the first time he felt his identity had been respectfully represented in a work classical music.
In Impossible Things, Muhly took his text from the work of Greek poet C.P. Cavafy, in a translation by Daniel Mendelsohn. Phan gave its U.S. premiere with Colin and Eric Jacobsen and The Knights at the 2016 NY Philharmonic Biennial. Again drawing inspiration from Britten, this time from the English composer’s Canticle II: “Abraham and Isaac,” Muhly’s Lorne Ys My Likinge is a setting of a Chester Mystery play, a cycle of 15th-century biblical dramas. This relates the story of the three Marys – Mary Magdalene, Mary Jacobi and Mary Salome – who arrive at the tomb of Christ, only to be greeted by two angels who tell them of Jesus’s resurrection.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
VAN MAGAZINE
“Phan’s deceptively halcyon tenor—clear and crystalline, but able, on a dime, to reflect the explosive storms of human experience—is an ideal vehicle for the emotional capaciousness that Muhly gives his texts. Closing out ‘Stranger’ with two letters written by wives to their deployed husbands during World War II (a departure from the ideas of exclusion and isolation, but also a counterpoint in hearing friendly words sent to two people isolated in foreign settings), Phan’s tenor weaves itself into a lavender haze of unconditional love and unencumbered longing, accented by a holy minimalism in Brooklyn Rider’s accompaniment. At times the quartet arches into silence save for the overtones. The closing piece reminds us, as history snakes around itself, that what we are invariably left with in any era are people looking to connect.”
SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE
“The heart immediately opens at the sound of Phan’s voice, which conveys the opening lines of Stranger with consummate warmth and touching vulnerability. Thanks to wonderful support from the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, whose members still appear as young and hip as they were when they burst onto the classical/new-music scene 15 years ago, Phan holds back nothing…in the last song, when the text grows tender and love is at its core, everyone comes together in extended passages of arresting beauty.
Phan and countertenor Reginald Mobley sing exquisitely, and pianist Lisa Kaplan offers passionate support, in Lorne ys my Likinge, a setting of the 19th Chester Mystery Play….Impossible Things, a “duo concerto for voice and violin,” sets a triptych of poems by the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy…Muhly comes into his own here, swept up in the emotional mystery of Cavafy’s marvelous verse. As early as the second line of the first setting, “The Hereafter” — “material appetites or love for the real don’t beguile me” — Muhly injects a gorgeous and evocative instrumental interlude…[Phan] and The Knights orchestra, with solo violin from Colin Jacobsen, perform with maximum expression. The ending is so powerful and passionate that it makes the performance, and the album as a whole, essential listening.
If you love Phan’s voice and artistry, and if you care about the ongoing reckoning of classical music with racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity, Stranger is a must.”
THE SUNDAY TIMES
THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2022 SO FAR
★★★★ “With a Greek-American mother and a Chinese-Indonesian father, the American tenor Nicholas Phan is well placed to comment on the concepts of identity, displacement and assimilation. A Chester Mystery Play (Lorne ys my Likinge), poems by CP Cavafy (in Impossible Things) and reportage and interviews about immigration and workplace conditions provide a widely varied libretto, which Muhly knits together with characteristic empathy, and his Brittenish writing for piano and voice is suffused with warmth and bleakness. The clarity of Phan’s singing and, on Lorne ys my Likinge, that of the countertenor Reginald Mobley, gives the texts emotional force.”
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
★★★★ “Muhly’s crisply unsentimental settings afford due space to these insightfully-chosen texts and Phan’s crystal-clear delivery is beautiful in its restraint.
Lorne ys my Likinge for tenor, countertenor and piano sets the drama outside Christ’s tomb as depicted in the 19th Chester Mystery Play, and receives a radiant performance from countertenor Reginald Mobley and dynamic accompaniment from pianist Lisa Kaplan. Impossible Things, a ‘duo concerto’ for voice, violin and string orchestra, sets poetry by CP Cavafy translated into English by Daniel Mendelsohn. Phan, on splendidly expressive form, is well matched by violinist Colin Jacobsen and chamber collective The Knights.”
ALLMUSIC
“Muhly's sensitive handling of text adds variety even as his musical language remains consistent. Phan's commitment to these pieces is palpable…Phan's duet work with countertenor Reginald Mobley in Lorne Ys My Likinge is absolutely delicious, and the accompaniment by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider and the New York chamber orchestra The Knights, is intimate and close. This marks a major step forward for Phan, and anyone who hasn't been following Muhly's music, which combines rigor with tremendous audience appeal (sample the ravishing "My Love" from Stranger), might do well to start here.”
BAY AREA REPORTER
“I haven't been moved by a recording as strongly or in a comparable way since Teresa Stratas published her CDs of Kurt Weill songs a quarter-century ago…The settings are, for the most part, spare. The music-making by a battery of ensemble players is penetrating. Phan's singing, which is unafraid of venturing into falsetto, is both direct and otherworldly…Phan has made his mark as a purveyor of songs, and his recordings of the works of Benjamin Britten and the French and German masters of song are salient and lasting. Here he finds another level of engagement with both words and music. His voice, now full, virile, and seasoned, carries with that taut relaxation encountered only in mastery of the first order.
Together he and Muhly make music at once deeply personal and yet purged of easy sentimentality.”
PIZZICATO
★★★★★ “Nicholas Phan sings with excellent lyrical comprehension very committedly and, with all vocal warmth and tenor euphony…And so this cycle, also thanks to the support of the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, becomes a moving experience…Nicholas Phan and countertenor Reginald Mobley sing quite exquisitely, and pianist Lisa Kaplan supports both singers with expressive playing…Phan and violinist Colin Jacobsen interpret the music very expressively, very rhetorically, so ending an album that guarantees a gripping listening experience and, first and foremost, once again shows Nicholas Phan to be an outstanding singer with clear diction and impeccable vocal delivery who excels in the song repertoire.”
ARTS FUSE
“Muhly’s writing in Stranger is of a type of post-Minimalism: often pulsing (or undulating) and rhythmically driven, though anything but harmonically simplistic. He doesn’t shy away from aggressive textures – the fifth movement’s central part is plenty gritty – but just as often the music hovers. Everything’s idiomatic, from the instrumental voicings, which are exquisitely navigated by Brooklyn Rider, to the text settings.
Phan, for whom Stranger was written, sings it all magnificently. Each word projects with clarity and intensity, from the recitative-like, syllabic opening movement to the gorgeous, high-tessitura setting of Leviticus and through the furious (timeless?) observations of institutionalized racism.
He’s just as compelling in Impossible Things…Certain illustrations of the text (like the low string ostinatos and high sighing figures around references to the “perishing world”) are particularly effective and the music’s concluding disintegration is haunting. Also striking is the finale, which is cast in the form of a passacaglia. Here, the sober structure mirrors Cavafy’s tragic retelling of the execution of an innocent teenager. Violinist Colin Jacobsen’s account of the long violin solo is strict and searing.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to
Anonymous, Jeff & Jamie Barnett, Colin Jaobsen, Eric Jacobsen, Robin & Steve Kunkel, Franci Neely, Lisa Ann Seischab, Noah Sochet, Bill Maylone
Many thanks also to the army of generous supporters who have contributed to the production of this album, including:
Anonymous, Fotine Assimos, Jill Bader, Laurence Boddie, Henry Breed,
Roxi Cargill & Peter Weston, Robyn Clark, Monica Harte, Noah Henry-Darwish, JustGive-Great Nonprofits, Colin Mew, Leah Plunkett & Mike Lewis, Trevor Pollack, Gina Soter, Andrew Tremblay, Vincent Tseng, Nathan Zebedeo
Stranger was part of Nicholas Phan's solo recording projects, which is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
Contributions for the charitable purposes of Nicholas Phan's solo recording projects must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
