December 21, 2023 - March 24, 2024
Nocturne
Art around books
Bellows Falls, Vermont
An invitational exhibit of artists, writers, poets, photographers, and filmmakers.
In seeing and saying how dark or moonlit a “Nocturne” is, we are depending on a multiplicity of voices to highlight this “mood of making”.
These personal, purposeful voices are the beginning of how we might understand a performer’s, a poet’s, an engraver’s, or painter’s movements as form to help us all hear, see, and perhaps feel the meanings intended by the work.
We leave each night and each life in our own ways. This exhibition represents a fragment of the possibilities of what and why art is needed in a time of so much white noise. —Bill Kelly, gallery director and curator
Visual Artists:
Jinane Abbadi, Gretchen Abendschein, Eric Aho, Gerry Biron, Michele Burgess, Candace Chaite, Brian Cohen, Andy Cross, Thomas Downs, Liz Hawkes deNiord, Harold Faye, Elizabeth Gemperlein, Chelsea Herman, Michael Johnson, Bill Kelly, Eric Lindbloom, Harry Mattison, Nelle Martin, Mare Martin, Lynne Merchant, Rachel Portesi, James Renner, Jo Anne Russo, F. Sansone, David Schirm, Paul Taylor, Vaune Trachtman, Jenny Yoshida Park
Poets and writers:
Susan Narucki, Carolyn Forché, Doug Anderson, Matthew Burgess, Peter Everwine, Bill Kelly, Chard deNiord
October 2023
concerts at El colegio nacional
october 10, 2023 6 p.M.
El colegio nacional Main hall
Centro historico mexico city
Susan Narucki, soprano
Gonzalo Gutiérrez Ortega, piano
Written on Air, with works of Hungarian composer György Kurtág including Requiem for the Beloved, Three Old Inscriptions, and József Attila – Töredékek. and the world premiere of new works for soprano and piano by the remarkable Georgina Derbez, on the series curated by esteemed composer Gabriella Ortiz.
Preceded by conversation about the ways in which poetry is transformed through the imagination of a composer, Written on Air is an exploration of the unique transformation that occurs when poetry is set to music. It includes the work of two singular composers, Georgina Derbez and György Kurtág. Their compositional languages are distinctive, but each sets text to music with exquisite attention to detail and awareness of the whole. Through using the singing voice in all of its expressive potential in combination with the extensive timbral possibilities of the piano, each of the composers illuminates layers of meaning in the texts, framed by seemingly inexhaustible imagination.
Works of Hungarian composer György Kurtág including Requiem for the Beloved, Three Old Inscriptions, and József Attila – Töredékek. and the world premiere of two new songs for soprano and piano by the esteemed Mexican composer Georgina Derbez, L’alphabet, taken from Belgian poet Albert Giraud's cycle of poems, and A821a, a setting of one of American poet Emily Dickinson's late poems, translated into Spanish by J.C. Calvillo. Written on the interior of an envelope, the poem is among Dickinson's most potent and luminous.
With Gonzalo Guttierez at El Colegio Nacional
August 11, 2023
approaching kurtág
Art Around books 5 Canal St, Bellows Falls, VT 05101
On View August 11 Through September 22, 2023
Kafka Fragments Performance August 11, 2023
Curated by Susan Narucki, the exhibit Approaching Kurtág is on view at Art Around Books from August 11 through September 22, 2023.
“ Each of the five artists in the exhibit, Jinane Abbadi, Michele Burgess, Bill Kelly, Olda Procházka and Jim Renner, have, contained within the borders of each print, a unique language. These images, which themselves have been created in conversation with poetry, prose, frameworks of language and broader ideas, resonate with recurring themes of the Kafka Fragments. The beauty and chaos of cities; the abyss of the divine, the unending complexities of human relationships, the loneliness of the outsider, the joyous heartbreak of living. Approaching Kurtag offers another space for the imagination of the listener and viewer to inhabit, wander and explore.” - Susan Narucki
Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber performed Kafka Fragments on August 11, 2023, the opening of the exhibit; audience members received a commemorative hand sewn book with a curator’s essay about the music and the exhibit.
July 2023
DURING THE WORST DAYS of the Covid lockdown, Susan Narucki sought solace in reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet (written in 1902–08, published 1929). She was particularly drawn to what Rilke had to say about the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren: “…If you could only be here with me so I could share with you the happiness of these great poems, they would let you realize we all now need more urgently: that transience is not separation…” This led her to seek out Verhaeren’s poetry, and then song settings of it. She found some truly great ones, and added to the project music by composers who would have been in France and Belgium at the time the poetry was written. The result is This Island, here released on Avie records, featuring Narucki and her longtime accompanist, Donald Berman. All of these works were written by female composers, with the exception of Raoul Pugno’s collaborative effort with Nadia Boulanger.
The recording opens with three songs by Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans, including the song from which this album derives its title. Bosmans enjoyed a rewarding career as a composer and pianist until she came under scrutiny by the Nazis, due to her mother’s Jewish heritage. This forced her into exile, and she spent the later years of the war in hiding, caring for her ailing mother. The three songs here date from 1947 and were among her earliest creative efforts after the war. There’s a deep melancholy to these songs, tinged with a sense of brooding, uncertainty and loneliness. All are enticing to hear. The featured poets are Adriaan Roland Holst and J. W. F. Werumeus Buning, Bosmans’s countrymen and contemporaries.
This is followed by four songs by Élisabeth Claisse, about whom neither Susan Narucki nor I were able to learn anything, except that these songs are from the 1920s. They are truly wonderful, very colorful and with a strong, unique melodiousness. Dedicated to French composer and writer Paul Le Flem, they are settings of poetry by Yves Arnaud, Pierre de Ronsard, Franz Toussaint and, finally, Verhaeren. They make you want to hear more of Claisse’s work.
Next up is a group of six songs by the Belgian composer and pianist Irène Fuerson, all settings from Verhaeren’s great anthology of love poetry, Les Heures Claires. These poems, presumably autobiographical, trace the love of two people from first acquaintance, love fulfillment, old age and to the death of one of them. The poetry, even when read in translation, can bring tears to your eyes, such is their luminous openness of affection. The effect is greatly enhanced by Fuerson’s music, which is in a slightly older, more Impressionist vein. Boulanger and Pugno also set four poems from Les Heures Claires, including one that Fuerson also set. The musical take is somewhat different, more progressive, but the emotional sense is just as strong.
American composer Marion Bauer came to Paris as Pugno’s piano student and through him went on to become the very first American student of Nadia Boulanger, predating Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland. Bauer went on to become an important advocate, both as a composer and a writer, of contemporary American music. Her Four Poems, Op. 16 (1924), set the poetry of her contemporary and fellow-American John Gould Fletcher, an Imagist poet and Pulitzer Prize winner. Fletcher writes love poems but also, and perhaps to a greater degree, a glorification of the natural environment of the American west. Bauer’s melodic writing is strong, and her accompaniments are quite virtuosic.
Throughout, Susan Narucki’s devotion to this music is radiantly apparent. She’s in fine voice, and Donald Berman’s accompaniment is stellar. Together they make the perfect team for this music. This thoughtfully considered presentation is so enjoyable. Repeated listening only makes this excellent recording more enduring. — Arlo McKinnon
April 18, 2023
sequenza 21: This Island
Soprano Susan Narucki has long been known as an advocate for contemporary music, as has collaborative pianist Donald Berman. On their latest recording, for Avie, the duo present a program of art songs by female composers active in the first half of the twentieth century. Three of the song sets are world premieres.
Narucki was inspired to begin collecting the songs for this recording by Rainer Maria Rilke. Specifically, in one of his letters he mentioned the Belgian Symbolist poet Émile Verhaeren, one of the most highly regarded poets of his country. After reading some of Verhaeren’s poetry, and finding it captivating, the soprano set about looking for songs that employed it.
The program Narucki assembles uses Verhaeren as a focal point, though other poets are also included. The liner notes discussing the program are well-curated. I wish they were more legible in the CD booklet, but looking at them online allows an easier time reading Narucki’s fine essay. Narucki and Berman are an excellent performing partnership. Both are fastidious in presenting detailed interpretations of art songs. At the same time, they are consummately expressive performers.
Belgian composer Irène Fuerison (1875-1931) created an entire group of Verhaeren settings, Les heure claires, Les heures aprés-midi, Les Heures soire, Op. 50. The poet wrote dozens of love poems, and Fuerison selected from among these a half dozen that celebrate long-lasting love. As with some of the other programmed composers, the influence of Debussy and Ravel looms large. Ô la splendeur de notre joie has a rhythmically intricate ostinato in the accompaniment and a juxtaposition of speech-like repeated notes and soaring melodies, rendered with considerable warmth by Narucki.
Nadia Boulanger collaborated with her teacher Raoul Pugno on Les Heures Claire (1909), settings of Verhaeren from which Narucki programs four selections. After the passing of her sister Lili, Nadia gave up composition for teaching. Dozens of prominent composers studied with her, including a number from the United States. Still, it is unfortunate that she didn’t afford herself the opportunity to compose more, as is made clear by Les Heures Claire. Le ciel en nuit s’est déplié is reminiscent of Gabriel Fauré’s songs, with a dash of Debussy. Vous m’avez dit has a simply constructed yet lustrous melody. Que te yeux claire, te yeux dété features a number of modal twists and turns and a soaring vocal melody. The final song, Ta bonté, is slow paced and elegant, a touching close to an appealing song set.
Three songs from 1947 composed by Henriëtte Bosmans are settings of twentieth century Dutch poets Adriaan Roland Holst and J.W.F Werumeus Buning. Dit eiland features plaintive, angular singing and similarly wide-ranging lines in the accompaniment. After a passionate beginning, it ends in a hush with enigmatic harmonies. In den regen has an emphatic vocal line buoyed by a spider web of arpeggiations in the piano. Once again, Bosmans relishes pulling back the dynamics and pacing partway through, with supple singing and figurations returning as an echo in the piece’s denouement. Narucki’s pianissimo declamation is exquisite. In Teeken den hemel in het zand der zee, Bosmans uses whole tone scales and pandiatonicism in a gradual unfurling of the words, sumptuously expressed, over carefully spaced chords.
Elizabeth Claisse is an enigmatic figure, only known to have written 4 Mélodies in 1922-23. Despite Narucki’s exertions, there doesn’t appear to be anything known about her biography. Could it be a pen name? One wonders. It is a pity there isn’t more of her work to sing, because this set of songs by various poets, while derivative, is quite well wrought. It begins with Issue, an Yves Arnaud setting that uses a few chromatic chord progressions that are proto Les Six. One hears Stravinsky’s influence in the stentorian bitonal tremolando chords that open the third song, Philosophe, a setting of Franz Toussaint’s troping of Keng-Tsin. The final song is the sole Verhaeren setting, Les Mendiants, of a piece with Poulenc. Berman’s voicing of its darkly hued harmonies is particularly beautiful, and Narucki counters with richly colored sound.
The last group of songs are by Marion Bauer (1882-1955), who taught contemporary music at NYU and wrote one of the first books in English that discussed the Second Viennese School and other twentieth century composers. Milton Babbitt was among her students. She also spent a great deal of time in France, and the influence of French composers on her work is clear. Four Poems, Op.24 (1916) are settings of the American Symbolist John Gould Fletcher, whose evocative imagery is an excellent complement to Verhaeren’s work. These were Bauer’s first songs, yet they are artfully written. “Through the Upland Meadows” is a miniature drama that features several juxtaposed motives. Here as elsewhere, Berman’s sense of pedaling and phrasing is flawless. Narucki explores a variety of dynamic contrasts and vocal colors that embellish the word painting. Her high notes, well-displayed here, are glorious. “I Love the Night” has a boldness that resembles an aria and includes a thrilling piano postlude. “Midsummer Dreams” uses the lilting 6/8 feel, like a boat on water, to create another vivid scene. “In the Bosom of the Desert” completes the recording with a song that begins slowly, with a high-lying emphatic vocal line, and then moves to a lyrical mid-tempo with the voice sitting in the middle register, performing parlando. The beginning melody returns, this time with an embellished modal accompaniment. Bass octaves emphatically build to the song’s climax, where Narucki performs the final high notes with glistening intensity.
This Island is extraordinarily well curated. One hopes it will engender further treasure hunts for forgotten female composers. Furthermore, the program eminently suits Narucki and Berman, both in terms of taste and temperament. It is one of the best recordings I have heard thus far in 2023.
- Christian Carey
March 18, 2023
WOMEN’s SONG FORUM: Kindred spirits
Part one of a conversation with the eminent musicologist Stephen Rodgers about the songs, poetry and remarkable women composers of the recording This Island. An excerpt below:
Steve: One other question I wanted to ask is how this project relates to some of the other projects you’ve done. You’re known for promoting new music. You’ve done many recordings of works by living composers. You’re a fierce advocate for new music. Yet here we have slightly older music. And yet there’s still this effort to find new voices.
Susan: This poetry drew me into an earlier time period, and it just felt like it was the right thing to do. And when I started, I had no idea it would become this collection of voices from the past. You’re right, it’s not really what I have spent my life doing. But on the other hand, in doing it, I began to see something that I can’t now unsee – that there is so much music written by female composers and by other underrepresented composers that is not making its way into the canon of performance. So it’s going to become part of my life, excavating these voices from the past, alongside celebrating voices from the present. Just last night, for example, I did a concert that included song cycles by two living composers – the Cuban-American composer Tania León and the British composer Judith Wier – as well as a cycle by Margaret Bonds and some of the Élisabeth Claisse songs from this CD. This blending of old and new voices is something that I need to keep doing, and it’s going to be part of my research going onward.
March 6, 2023
Grammy-winning singer Susan Narucki draws from pandemic loss for stirring new album, ‘This Island’
An interview with Beth Wood of the San Diego Union Tribune about the This Island and a preview of March 8, 2023 concert with Donald Berman at UC San Diego, celebrating songs of women composers.