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Even in miniature, cover art matters. This is a case in point; the
little bit of Hebrew and Arabic on the cover got my attention and made
me curious. I'd heard of Dawn Upshaw, an operatic soprano I knew for
her appearances on National Public Radio, often over some popular
music project. So I didn't know what to expect; would this be
classical music or something more accessible?
A little of both, as it turned out. Ayre, a new work
by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, combines Jewish, Arab
Christian and Palestinian source material into a work for orchestra
and Ms. Upshaw's voice. With so many influences, it's hard to
characterize: sometimes gentle, sometimes wistful, sometimes soaring.
Folksongs is an older but similar work by Luciano Berio, who
took traditional songs from the U.S., France, Italy, Armenia and
Azerbeidjan and assembled them into a torture test for the vocalist
but not, thankfully, for the audience. Both compositions move between
strange and familiar almost from moment to moment.
And no, in case you were wondering, I didn't know any of this before I
started writing this review. Amazing what you can find with a Google
search or two. Or, in this case, twelve...
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