Sharon Mabry

Frederic Goossen (Composer), Elizabeth Vercoe (Composer), Samuel Barber (Composer), Rosemary Platt (Performer), Patsy Wade (Performer), Sharon Mabry (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Rosemary Platt, Patsy Wade, Sharon Mabry
• Composer: Frederic Goossen, Elizabeth Vercoe, Samuel Barber
• Audio CD (January 1, 1991)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Owl Recording, Inc.
• ASIN: B0000WVWXC
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,575 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. A Nymph’s Passion from GARLAND: Five Poems of Ben Jonson (Frederic Goossen)

2. A Vision of Beauty from GARLAND

3. Epithalamion from GARLAND

4. Hedon’s Song from GARLAND

5. Eccho’s Song from GARLAND

6. A Wife Waits from At Casterbridge Fair by Frederic Goossen

7. After the Club-Dance from At Casterbridge Fair

8. The Inquiry from At Casterbridge Fair

9. Now Have I Fed from Three Songs Op. 45 (Samuel Barber)

10. A Green Lowland from Three Songs

11. O Boundless, Boundless from Three Songs

12. Jehanne la bonne Lorraine from HERSTORY III by Elizabeth Vercoe

13. I have labored sore from HERSTORY III

14. They call me Jenny from HERSTORY III

15. Look on thy country from HERSTORY III

16. La France nous appelle from HERSTORY III

17. I am a soldier from HERSTORY III

18. Gentle little Dauphin from HERSTORY III

19. The Holy Cat Blues from HERSTORY III

20. N’appercevez-vous from HERSTORY III

See all 23 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

This CD features mezzo-soprano Sharon Mabry's sensitive and moving performances of contemporary songs for voice and piano. Mabry's singing of 20th century music has been widely and enthusiastically praised. The New York Times has acclaimed her "healthy, versatile and expressive voice," and the Boston Globe has admired her "creative, convincing, and above all, warmly communicative" singing.

Elizabeth Vercoe's HERSTORY III, a highly-charged twelve-part work based on the story of Joan of Arc, was commissioned for and premiered by Sharon Mabry. The texts include Christine de Pisan's openly feminist poem celebrating the victory at Orléans, the only poem about Joan of Arc written in her lifetime. Frederic Goossen writes that "The songs from At Casterbridge Fair are expressionistic, with a chromatic vocal line... The GARLAND songs are...much more diatonic than the Hardy songs. I intended them to be songs in the great tradition of the art-song..." The Barber pieces, premiered by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1974, unmistakably exhibit Barber's wonderful ability to shape a flexible, expressive melodic line.