Countertenor
Reginald Mobley
has focused mostly on Baroque works and contemporary art song, but with 2023's
Because
album, he tries something completely different and probably unique: he performs African American spirituals. This may be the first such performance by a countertenor, African American or otherwise, and one may be forgiven for wondering whether the novelty is the main attraction. However, sometimes a novelty can be muted a bit if other ideas of high originality are present. That is what happens here, and the whole production holds together in quite a haunting way. For one thing,
Mobley
is accompanied in an entirely new manner by a jazz pianist,
Baptiste Trotignon
, who did the arrangments of the spirituals. This casts the melodic and textual material of the spirituals in a fresh light. For another,
mixes spirituals with other types of music: art songs by
Florence Beatrice Price
and others, a jazz solo by
Trotignon
, and even
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
, which perhaps doesn't fit the overall concept terribly well. The mixture has various fascinating effects, including bringing out African American inflections in
Price
's language that are sometimes a bit submerged. There is more, including a wonderful choice of material (
Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard
is not a very common spiritual) and the sheer beauty of
's voice, but that is all for the listener to discover on a real sleeper of an album. ~ James Manheim