Amy Burton, soprano; Patrick Mason, baritone; John Musto and Michael Barrett, pianos

American composer John Musto brings a rich, eclectic individuality to the songs on this superb disc. The harmonic palette is vast, the thematic writing keenly attuned to the words. Musto's responses to verses by such poets as Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings, Dorothy Parker and Eugene O'Neill are charming, wistful and vivid. Teaming with the composer as deft pianist, baritone Patrick Mason, soprano Amy Burton and pianist Michael Barrett make expressive gold of the alluring creations. Grade: A.
-- Donald Rosenberg, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

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Many view John Musto (b. 1954) as the successor to Ned Rorem, the most consistently successful composer of American art song – not that Rorem is going away yet! In fact, many singers I know think he’s even better. And I’m not here to dispute it. Musto is the real thing, a quite flawless musician, with superb chops and lyric instincts. He’s sophisticated as hell and can write a great tune.

I’ve received for simultaneous review two discs that highlight the composer’s versatility. The first is a song recital with Musto as accompanist. It includes equally distributed songs for baritone and soprano, with Viva Sweet Love and Quiet Songs being cycles for the two voices, respectively. Musto has a gift for taking familiar tropes and somehow imbuing them with new life. This may have to do with the fact that his taste for popular American music tends toward the first half of the 20th century, where the distance allows for more latitude in reinterpretation. Blues, jazz, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway all are evoked at one time or another. But there isn’t dripping irony here, the way there is in much postmodern music. Musto’s voice is neither sentimental or pandering; his approach to older languages is full of respect, yet not deferential. He finds fresh things in familiar sounds. It’s clear-eyed, or maybe better, clear-eared. Thus the chords of the very first song of Viva Sweet Love , “as is the sea marvelous,” sounds bluesy, but they’re chords you really haven’t heard before in this context. The same goes for the Gershwinesque sway of “Penelope’s Song,” which I’m still humming. The Quiet Songs tend to project a purer lyricism, in the spirit of Copland and Bernstein, above all in the eponymous third song. And lest you think the composer only does “classic American tonal,” then we get Nude at the Piano, a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking song, whose harmony is in full Bergian chromaticism, and yet is also a perfectly convincing torch song in the cabaret tradition.

I could cite many other examples from any one of these songs, but it would become repetitious and actually detract from their seamless quality. Both Mason, and Burton (the latter is Musto’s muse and life partner) project these songs ideally, with stunningly clear diction and intonation. Musto is a dynamite accompanist.

Later the Same Evening shows off Musto’s strengths in a different light. Many vocal composers aren’t equally adept at the intimate demands of the art song, and the theatrical ones of opera. Musto, at least in this work (the only opera of his I so far know, though his Volpone seems to have been a hit), shows he can cover the field. The opera has an unusual provenance – a show of Edward Hopper paintings at Washington’s National Gallery occasioned a commission to accompany the exhibition. The librettist is Mark Campbell, the same lyricist as for Nude at the Piano. It’s one of the best librettos I’ve heard in years: touching, witty, funny. The conceit is that we eavesdrop on the “real” lives of characters from a series of Hopper paintings. As it turns out, they’re all going to a Broadway show the same evening. We watch their domestic anxieties and crises play out, until they (or almost all of them) reach the theater, where they settle into viewing the musical. A series of tender encounters occur, and there are several resolutions of the relational dilemmas from the piece’s opening.

The actual “show” is played out without words, a musical dumb show in fast forward that’s a brilliant evocation of classic Broadway from the 1930s. While watching, the Virginia schoolteacher Jimmy has an epiphany that this city life must become his own, a soliloquy that’s a love poem to New York. Gus, having left his loveless marriage to Elaine to take refuge in a bar, arrives late, desperate from having come realize how much she means to him. His confession of terror at losing her is heartrending, and even more affecting is the way she takes him back, pulls him from the precipice. These are only a couple of the wonderful encounters and revelations that make up the piece.

While I might single out a couple of singers (in particular, Blake Friedman’s incarnation of Jimmy’s ecstatic yearning for a better life), frankly, this whole young cast does superbly. I’ve noted that Albany is releasing a series of conservatory recordings of American operas, and it’s a winning project: a benefit to the young performers, the companies, the composers, and the American lyric stage.

I know this may seem like a mash note to the composer. I don’t know him, though we’ve met once in passing, and share a vocal recital on another disc – though I have only one song and he a cycle, which is as it should be! But I feel strongly here precisely because my own tastes tend to be towards music that “reinvents the world,” that pushes boundaries, and engages in a lively debate, even argument with tradition. As such, I should be skeptical of Musto’s language and aesthetic. Yes, he is different, far more comfortable with tradition, but he’s not complacent. There are a number of composers currently who write music that aims to please audiences through its familiarity with the repertoire. But it’s not really about communication, it feels more like market research (or maybe a report of what other music the composer likes). In contrast, what I like about Musto’s music is that it is profoundly humanistic. It respects texts, characters, wants not just to be accessible to audiences, but also to reach in and touch them, to take them into an empathic identification with others. That’s a noble cause.

Both these discs are knockouts, and make a great double portrait of the composer. The opera in particular seems a candidate for my Want List.

--Robert Carl, Fanfare - September/October 2009

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If you turned five paintings into live action videos, you would have accomplished what composer John Musto and librettist Mark Campbell did in their vital new opera, "Later the Same Evening: An Opera Inspired by Five Paintings of Edward Hopper." It was given its world premiere by the Maryland Opera Studio on Thursday night at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

The tightly paced production -- really a tragicomedy -- is based on the American realist's oils, currently on view at the National Gallery of Art. Directed by opera veteran Leon Major, the entire production re-creates the stark realism of Hopper's cityscapes and still lifes of New York in the wake of the Great Depression: "Room in New York," "Hotel Window," "Hotel Room," "Two on the Aisle" and "Automat."

Set on an early evening in 1932, the story line follows disconnected, warring couples and bereft individuals who find themselves colliding in a chance encounter at a Broadway musical. Their momentary togetherness extends to a post-performance downpour, then a return to their separate lives, though there are happy endings in a few cases. Campbell's libretto wends its lively way with mournful soliloquies and biting dialogues between characters painfully unaware of anyone else's concerns.

Conductor Glen Cortese led the singers and the National Gallery Orchestra in an exciting performance; Musto's music courses through impressions of unhinged tonal harmonies along with brilliantly conceived counterpoint, especially in the cast's magnificently rendered ensembles. The vocal solos often waft into heightened expression, capturing the pitches and rhythms of real speech.

All the singers were uniformly excellent. Kudos are also deserved for the versatile true-to-life sets, with their stunning projections of the paintings, the penetrating fluorescent illumination and the Hopperesque costuming.

The opera is a joint project of the National Gallery, the Clarice Smith Center and the university's school of music. It repeats today and tomorrow at the center and on Dec. 2 at the National Gallery.
--Cecilia Porter, The Washington Post

By Tom Huizenga Special to the Washington Post Monday, June 25, 2007

Greed never goes out of style. Four hundred years ago, Ben Jonson built an entire play, "Volpone," from the insidious incarnations of greed and managed to create something both humorous and poignant. Composer John Musto and librettist Mark Campbell have done Jonson one better: They "unfaithfully" revamped his story, adding even more wit, a rhyming text and music that sparkles. Their chamber opera "Volpone" received its world premiere at the Barns of Wolf Trap in 2004, and it returned Friday evening in a new production.

The wealthy Venetian Volpone (Italian for "fox") pretends to be dying in order to swindle his upscale neighbors out of precious gifts; each neighbor is hoping to be named the sole heir to Volpone's estate, and all are willing to corrupt themselves in the process. These scavengers are appropriately named Voltore ("vulture"), Corvina ("raven") and Cornaccio ("crow"). Volpone and his servant Mosca ("fly") relish the art of the con as much as the cash, and are nearly overthrown when a last-minute turn of events -- led by Erminella, a character created by Musto and Campbell -- rescues them.

To list the eclectic mix of styles Musto draws from in his music is not to degrade it. Snippets of jazz and washes of atonality bump against lyrical passages, waltzes and pop hooks. It comes across as an agile, fizzy melange with tasteful nods to Rossini, Bernstein and Broadway.

Only occasionally is the music too busy, clashing with Campbell's already rapidly moving text.

On the whole, the words and music interlock ingeniously, often in hilarious combinations between several characters. Musto and Campbell ride the speech patterns of the English language with a natural clarity.

"Volpone's" roles are not deeply drawn, which can lead performers to try either injecting some profundity into their characters or to go into over-the-top mode to enhance the comedy. Both strategies were evident Friday.

Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller, so expressive with her big Bette Davis eyes and fluttery voice, was deliciously funny as Corvina, conned into disinheriting her moralizing son, Bonario, sung by the strong-voiced Steven Sanders. Baritone Museop Kim, as the lawyer Voltore, played his role with a cooler head and warmly rounded tones. Tenor Rodell Rosel seemed to put a touch of the late comic actor Paul Lynde in his performance -- fussy and high-strung, especially when forced to lend his virgin bride, Celia (sweet-voiced Anne-Carolyn Bird), to the glutinous Volpone. Faith Sherman, as Erminella (dressed more like a bride than a brothel owner), sang one of the opera's longest arias with a trace of coloratura atop her large voice.

The role of Mosca contains as much music as Volpone's. Jeremy Little applied his light but firm tenor voice well, with every word intelligible, yet he remained faintly aloof. Joshua Jeremiah, a husky, deep-voiced baritone, created a carefree Volpone, singing with flexibility and abandon, clearly enjoying his scams.

Additional roles were enthusiastically performed, including a trio of crooked judges and Volpone's house attendants, who reprised a Renaissance-styled motet. Erhard Rom's simple yet adaptable set was bathed in burnished gold. Sara Jobin's nimble conducting kept the comedy bouncing right along.

Truly funny operas, like "Volpone" (originally commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation), are rare these days. We've been in a dry spell, it seems, since the day Rossini retired. In a world that tends to regard comedies as second-class works of art, "Volpone" stands out not only for its humor but also its brilliant marriage of words and music.

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The Chamber Music of John Musto, performed by Music from Copland House, Koch Int'l 7690

Composers often become eclectic to hide behind a lack of individuality. This cannot be said of John Musto, whose chamber music on this disc wraps arms around many musical styles even as it delivers on its own appealing, colourful and moving terms. Noted for songs and theatre works, as well as sterling pianism, Musto also is a natural when it comes to instrumental interplay. Every moment in these works emerges in the context of cohesive argument and novel design.

The Piano Trio introduces Musto's trademark nervous urban energy and ability to give•each instrument a vital place in scampering, poetic or misty activity. The songfulness of the second movement owes something to the cabaret world of Poulenc, though the music's alternation of insouciance and longing sounds like no composer other than Musto.

His Sextet places strings and clarinet in jazzy, klezmer-tinged conversation. The clarinet shapes playful lines through the extremes of its range and enters into fugal conflict with colleagues. Hints of Jewish folklore pervade the music, whose clarinet wails and slides rub shoulders with wild flights and melancholic utterances. The rhythmic energy and whirling motion of the last movement's dance very well might rouse you from your listening seat.

Musto has scored his Divertimento for the novel combination of flute, clarinet, viola, cello, piano and percussion. The atmosphere again pays respects to Poulenc (whose naughty, sentimental Sextet often is evoked), while also bestowing affectionate nods on West Side Story and Bartók. Musto has a gift for melding ingredients into a musical stew of delicious and spicy flavours.

The players who make up Music from Copland House sound like they relish every phrase. In the Sextet, clarinettist Derek Bermel does his thing with acrobatic ease and expressive vibrancy. Then again, everyone seems completely immersed in this captivating and penetrating activity, as likely will music lovers smart enough to add this disc to their collection.
– Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone, March 2007

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