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GORDON: Green Sneakers
Jesse Blumberg, bar; Miami Quartet
Blue Griffin 207—58 minutes
Ricky Ian Gordon wrote Green Sneakers, a cycle of 17 songs and two purely instrumental movements, as a response to his grief after the death of his lover, Jeffrey Grossi, from AIDS. As Gordon explains in his notes, “There was a day when I was staring into our closet from the vast desolation of our bed, and his sad little green sneakers suggested to me a text about the day we bought them together, which seemed to pour out of me” and became “a cycle of poems that tells the story of that day and the period after, leading all the way up to his death”.
It is written for baritone, string quartet, empty chair, and piano (played by the singer at the start of the final song). Gordon says the inspiration for this work came from Handel’s Lucretia or Britten’s Phedre “where one singer is both telling the story and living the story”. Wes Blomster, in his review of the work’s premiere at the Vail Valley Music Festival in 2008 (N/D 2008), reported that the work “so moved the audience . . . that silence prevailed before applause led to a standing ovation”. Hearing this work is, as Blomster comments, “an experience of profound sadness and intensely personal emotion”. Wilfred Owen said of his poems, “My subject is war and the pity war distilled. The poetry is in the pity.” While Gordon’s texts read more like prose than poetry, the poetry can be heard in the pity his grief distilled. Here the accessible music of one of this country’s best composers for musical theater and the excellent performance of the songs confirm Blomster’s assessment. Jesse Blumberg and the Miami Quartet, who gave the premiere at Vail, take you on an intense journey of remembrance with tender performances.
R MOORE
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