Track Listing & Audio Samples
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		Norman Mathews
		Songs of the Poet
	1.	Sometimes with One I Love (1:36)
	2.	That Music Always Round Me (2:39)
	3.	Hear the Frailest Leaves of Me (1:25)
	4.	Tears (3:50)
	5.	As the Time Draws Nigh (4:17)
	6.	Grand is the Seen (1:39)
	7.	The Last Invocation (2:44)
		Joelle Wallach
		up into the silence
	8.	will you teach (0:38)
	9.	these children singing (1:54)
	10.	newlys of silence (1:21)
	11.	may my heart always (1:39)
		Corey Field
		3 Yeats Songs
	12.	To a Child Dancing in the Wind (2:21)
	13.	The Witch (2:16)
	14.	The Young Man's Song (4:09)
		Elizabeth Austin
		A Birthday Bouquet
	15.	a birthday wish (0:55)
	16.	a birthday (2:33)
	17.	remember (2:54)
	18.	had I the heavens' embroidered cloths (2:13)
		Stephen Wilcox
		Facing the Moon
	19.	How Can a Man (2:44)
	20.	Leaf by Leaf (2:27)
	21.	Drinking Alone With the Moon (2:09)
	22.	Quiet Night Thoughts (1:45)
		Paul A. Epstein
		Bird Songs
	23.	Birds Again (2:04)
	24.	Faces (3:40)     Listen: RealAudio or MP3
	25.	Sparrow (2:54)
	26.	Moot (2:11)
		Ronald Perera
		Songs from Sleep Now
	27.	I Hear an Army (2:59)
	28.	Ecce Puer (2:42)
	29.	The Twilight Turns from Amethyst (2:32)
	30.	Sleep Now (2:36)

 

Related Links
• Elizabeth Scheidel-Austin @ American Music Center
• Elizabeth Scheidel-Austin @ Abilene Christian University
• Joelle Wallach
• Gregory Wiest

 

Reviews

IAWM Journal - Volume 6, Number 3 - by Ellen Grolman Schlegel

"Elizabeth Austin's Birthday Bouquet is a cycle of four songs based on texts by E. E. Cummings, Christina Rossetti and W. B. Yeats. Austin has crafted the songs so that the piano is contributive but not overpowering, supportive but not subservient. The very brief For Your Birthday (Cummings) features a continuous piano murmur that effectively sets off the fairly atonal, slowly-moving vocal line. The second song, a birthday (Rossetti), begins in a similar manner; this work is longer and presents a more disjunct vocal line that highlights its occasional shining rays of consonance. The ending at first perplexes and then delights: the tenor perches on an appoggiatura that sounds as though it should resolve upward. Instead, the piano intrudes with a surprising final chord. The third song, remember (Rossetti), is generally darker, more introspective; a lover, rejected, spurned, but not bitter, exhorts his or her partner to "remember me...better by far that you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad." The Yeats text, had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, is itself more elegant than the three that precede it, and Austin, to support the text, provides a light accompaniment, characterized by trills in the introduction and midsection. The songs are beautifully performed by tenor Gregory Wiest and pianist Oresta Cybriwsky.

Joelle Wallach, raised in New York City and Morocco, was trained at the Juilliard Preparatory Division. Her settings of texts by E. E. Cummings are a cappella, requiring Wiest to sing not only without the support of the keyboard, but with the further challenge of performing large, repeated melodic leaps in the first song, will you teach. Two of the songs, these children singing, newlys of silence and may my heart always, are exercises in vocal control that are very moving, with the vocal line undeniably directed and the leaps carefully placed.

Wiest exhibits admirable diction and a fine sense of phrasing, but I found his upper range to be ocasionally a bit strident in the Austin work. He shines in the unaccompanied Wallach songs, where his intonation is true and unwavering. Cybrisky's accompaniment was atractive and sensitive, never obtrusive.

Other selections on the disc include Songs of the Poet by Norman Mathews, Three Yeats Songs by Corey Field, Facing the Moon by Stephen Wilcox, Birdsongs by Paul Epstein and Songs from Sleep Now by Ronald Petera."

 

Twenty-First Century Music - July 2001 - by Elizabeth Agnew

"The poets are first-rate Americans, Europeans, and Asians in Time Marches On: More Modern American Songs, featuring the artistry of tenor Gregory Wiest and pianist Oresta Cybriwsky. Norman Mathews brings postimpressionist touches to Walt Whitman in seven Songs of the Poet, ending with a touch of the ecstatic in "The Last Invocation."

The four songs of Joelle Wallach's up into the silence marries a stern solitude to the verbal whimsies of e.e. cummings. Corey Field's Yeats Songs finds new beauty in such classic poems as "To a Child Dancing in the Wind," "The Witch," and "The Young Man's Song (Brown Penny). In the latter, a haunting, Crumb-like quality nicely pervades the accompaniment.

Elizabeth Austin's A Birthday Bouquet provides a gentle continuity with the above in poignant, heartfelt, and mysterious settings from cummings, Christine Rossetti, and Yeats. The orientalia of Facing the Moon -- four settings by Stephen Wilcox of texts from Li Yü, Liu K'o Chuang, and Li Po -- enticingly add a welcome voice to this collection. Perticularly striking are the arpeggic flourishes of the second "Leaf by Leaf" and the pentatonic ostinati of "Drinking Alone with the Moon." Heady stuff.

Paul A. Epstein's BirdSongs, to poems of Toby Olson, continue the high quality in gentle and strident ornithology. Songs from Sleep Now, Ronald Perera's settings of James Joyce, are as strident ("I Hear an Army") and transcendent ("Sleep Now") as the texts require."