I CARE IF YOU LISTEN: Editor’s Picks: 2020 Contemporary Classical Albums
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN: Editor’s Picks: 2020 Contemporary Classical Albums
BY AMANDA COOK
“Coming on the heels of other recent works about Black motherhood (Roberta Gumbel and Susan Kander’s dwb; Allison Loggins-Hull and Toshi Reagon’s Love Always), The Grey Land (New Amsterdam Records) is the latest release from composer Joseph C. Phillips and his ensemble, Numinous. Featuring soprano Rebecca L. Hargrove and narrator Kenneth Browning, The Grey Land explores hope, violence, the American dream, and survival through arias, instrumental interludes, and spoken word.
The arias give us a glimpse of what Samuel Barber’s Knoxville, Summer of 1915 (a bucolic reflection on growing up swaddled in the relative comfort and safety of white America) would look like in The Upside Down—where things are uncannily familiar, yet cold and distorted with horrors lurking in the darkness. When compared to the more fleshed out arias, some of the movements with forthcoming visual elements (film, dance, etc.) leave something to be desired in their current audio-only state. However, the overall arc of the work is well-conceived and promises to be a stunning and complex multimedia portrait of Black America when it is able to be fully realized.”