MasterVoices, the acclaimed vocal ensemble led since 2013 by artistic director and all-round music man Ted Sperling, generally caps its annual activities with a gala concert/production. Notable recent offerings have been drawn from works by the likes of Weill and Gershwin. In this our pandemic season, they have relocated their efforts to the small screen/small smart phone/small whatever.
But there is nothing small about Myths and Hymns, Adam Guettel’s song cycle, nor the manner in which it is being presented. Let us also add, up front, that it is offered not on a pay-per-view basis but free to all. Which is to say, risk-free for the viewer. Tune in; if it’s not to your taste, no harm done. Although it’s likely to leave you pining for next month’s installment.
Guettel followed his initial, groundbreaking musical—Floyd Collins, at Playwrights Horizons in 1996—with the song cycle Saturn Returns: A Concert. This plotless evening was mounted for three weeks at George C. Wolfe’s Public Theater in March 1998 in simple form, with six singers on barstools accompanied by nine swinging musicians. Saturn Returns was, as a theatrical experience, astounding and all but impossible to accurately describe at the time; many audience members were struck in awe by the combination of styles, genres, and exuberance on display. It was as if we were seeing the future of musical theater unfolding and exploding in front of our ears.
With no logical place for future theatrical life—being neither musical nor revue, nor anything we’d seen before—the song cycle resurfaced as an exceptional, high-quality 1999 recording under the name Myths and Hymns. Guettel, who seems to be a notoriously slow writer, more than fulfilled his early promise in 2005 with the ravishing The Light in the Piazza. We are even now awaiting his two forthcoming musicals, Millions (from which we’ve heard five songs over the years, each up to the composer’s exceedingly lofty standards) and Days of Wine and Roses (from which we’ve heard the composer perform one).
Sperling, who in his early career served as music director for Saturn Returns and Myths and Hymns, has now brought the song cycle to MasterWorks. But this is not merely a few singers sitting around in a glorified Zoom session. The 19 musical numbers—we can’t call them songs, really—are being made into 19 short, miniature films with different singers and directors. MasterVoices is streaming the results in four “chapters”; the first, Flight, contains six of these films. The forthcoming chapters are scheduled to premiere on February 24, April 14, and May 26.
Flight, which runs 28 minutes, begins with an overture of sorts: the instrumental “Prometheus” performed by the two-piano duo Anderson and Roe (which is to say, Greg Anderson—also credited as director of the segment—and Elizabeth Joy Roe). Performed at back-to-back Steinways—or, rather, keyboard to keyboard Steinways—this prepares us for the visual variety of these films. We see duo shots of the pianists, the keyboards, the hands, and the sound boards—until the screen explodes into twelve kaleidoscopic fragments.
“Saturn Returns” is the plaint of a singer—one supposes this is the inner Guettel speaking—who feels “There is only I want, I want, I want” but complains that “I don’t know what I hunger for, I don’t know why I feel the hunger more and more with ev’ry passing day.” Joshua Henry is the powerful singer, Sperling the director. Henry is backed by a large portion of the MasterVoices ensemble—gazing yearningly out various windows.
“Icarus” tells of the mythical fellow (Mykal Kilgore), fatally overshadowed by his father Daedalus (Norm Lewis), who flies too near the sun and tumbles into the sea. “Look at me, I’m going to be the stuff that myths are made of,” he sings, while his father warns him of the danger of “unlimited altitude.” The piece, filmed outdoors in multiple locations, features more MasterVoices, all donning precautionary sunglasses as they avert the rays of the sun.
“Migratory V” is the first of several extra-special songs in the cycle. It is delivered in triptych form by Renée Fleming, Julia Bullock, and Kelli O’Hara; they’re all in white, the last from an especially scenic lakeside snowscape. Wonderfully and wonderingly directed by Lear deBessonet, bolstered by migratory animation by Cloud Chatanda. “Migratory V” is not meant to be the fifth in a series of migratories, mind you. It is, rather, the “V” formed by birds in flight: “How wonderful if that’s what God could see.”
“Pegasus” is among the warmly humorous pieces included in Guettel’s often majestical set. Jose Llana—who was prominent in Saturn Returns at the Public, back in 1998—returns as Bellerophon, the fellow who rides that mythical winged horse. He is matched with equally flavorful performances by Capathia Jenkins, singing the role of Pegasus; and Elizabeth Stanley, insanely trilling as the Gadfly who causes the fall. Again, the director of the segment (Sperling in this case) accentuates the narrative with fine illustrations in cartoonlike-style by Steven Kellogg. Also on hand is Annie Golden, who shared the Saturn Returns stage with Llana and music director Sperling, providing a wide-eyed narrative introduction.
This piece is performed—musically—as a guitar solo by Guettel, although he uses the body of his acoustic so percussively that it is more like a duet for guitar strings and shell. The rest of Flight, other than the aforementioned two-piano opening, features the wondrous orchestrations—created for Saturn Returns and expanded for Myths and Hymns—by Don Sebesky and Jamie Lawrence.
Chapter 1 culminates with “Jesus, the Mighty Conquerer,” featuring the gospel sextet Take 6 in an arrangement by Mark Kibble, augmented by two dozen MasterVoices equally in the groove. (While most of the Myths and Hymns lyrics are by Guettel, five—including this song—use words taken from an 1886 hymnal called “The Temple Trio.” Two others, including “Pegasus,” credit additional lyrics to Ellen Fitzhugh.)
Which leaves us in rapt anticipation for Chapter 2: Work, and we can hardly wait.
Myths and Hymns, Chapter 1: Flight was streamed beginning January 13, 2021. Information and link: mastervoices.org
