Bridge Records' Complete Crumb Edition, Vol. 10, highlights pre-eminent American composer
George Crumb in a remarkable collaboration in the "family way" -- with his daughter, soprano
Ann Crumb, as featured soloist in two song cycles: The River of Life (2003) and Unto the Hills (2002). Both of these cycles are part of a larger project (American Songbook), to which
Crumb has contributed four cycles, in which traditional American song texts are subjected to
Crumb's uniquely spectral and mystical musical treatments. Although Bridge previously released Unto the Hills with
Ann Crumb on Volume 7 of this series, it represented a formative version of the cycle containing only eight pieces; now there are nine and various small details are added in some of the other pieces as well.
Ann Crumb is a well-known Tony Award-nominated singer and actress who works most often in Broadway shows and has appeared on an episode of Law and Order or two. She sings her father's settings in a light, pop voice more readily associated with the Broadway stage than with the "green umbrella"-type new music recitals where
Crumb's music is heard most frequently. Nothing against
Lucy Shelton or the late, great
Jan de Gaetani (who premiered
Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children), but
Ann Crumb's light and flexible voice seems to work best for this music, particularly in these settings given the familiar American, and specifically Appalachian, milieu of the texts. Sometimes
Crumb requires
Ann Crumb to hum passages of the music, or to break out of the familiar pattern of the melody and repeat fragments of phrases, which she does as though it's second nature. That's an uncommon skill set for a pop voice;
Charles Ives would have been jealous.
George Crumb is turning back to his West Virginia roots in these cycles. While some listeners, unable to divorce these tunes from their original traditional context, might find
Crumb's re-interpretations of them too bizarre, others may well find the traditional elements just familiar enough to relate to
Crumb's music in a way that they have not been able to in the past.
Crumb's musical settings are scored for percussionists and piano and the instrumentalists are drawn from the ranks of
Orchestra 2001 and led by
James Freeman; the percussion playing is crisp and taut, yet nonchalant in the manner that
Crumb seems to intend. Bridge's recording is clear, warm, and responsive and succeeds in having the best of both worlds, expansively spatial while intimate when it needs to be. Although recorded at Lang Concert Hall in Swarthmore, PA, sometimes
Ann Crumb sounds like she is singing in an old country church -- just the right ambience.