NIGHT AFTER NIGHT: For the Record: November 20, 2020
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT: For the Record: November 20, 2020
BY STEVE SMITH
“From the plaintive opening of The Grey Land, with its haunted allusions to Samuel Barber’s wistful Knoxville: Summer of 1915, you sense immediately the emotional weight composer and bandleader Joseph C. Phillips Jr. means to evoke. Billed as a ‘mono-opera’ for soprano, narrator, chorus, and ensemble, the ambitious, gripping work deals with the parlous state of race relations in the United States. The libretto, assembled by Phillips, incorporates text from Frederick Douglass, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and others; one especially wrenching movement includes recorded testimony from the mothers of Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and Sandra Bland. Played by a band adept at groove and flush with improvisers, the music mulls and mourns, roars and stomps. That the album arrives at yet another flashpoint in U.S. history elevates The Grey Land from a breakthrough piece to a necessary statement.”