Zephyr Offers A Musical Experience Cathedral Atmosphere Can’t Be Topped As Venue For Religious-Based Music Of Zephyr

Zephyr Sunday, Feb. 19 at St. John’s Cathedral

Some music can be heard anywhere. A Bach cello suite would be wonderful if encountered in the middle of a forest. A Mozart symphony makes its effect in the concert hall or in a living room with a good stereo system. Other music is site-specific, begging to be heard in a place for which it was written. Almost all religious music belongs in this category. The music performed Sunday afternoon at St. John’s by the singers and players of Zephyr received a great boost from the cathedral’s space and atmosphere.

The work most enhanced by the cathedral’s ambiance was William Bolcom’s “Black Host” for organ, percussion and pre-recorded tape. This is an unsettling piece. It begins with, not chords, but seven cacophonous, anguished roars from the organ. Anxiety builds through the addition of rumble and jangle of percussion, and later with a mounting jumble of taped sounds as though someone were twirling a radio dial while steadily turning up the volume.

This chaos is interrupted, first by some Bach-like organ music, later by the sounds of a carnival calliope and, after the noise of the taped sounds subsides, a questioning melody from the organ’s flute stop.

Now if this description sounds more like a particularly bad dream than a musical experience, that’s the way it comes off on recordings. In the open spaces of the cathedral, with the intensity of the playing of organist Charles Bradley and the extraordinary control of percussionist Martin Zyskowski, “Black Host” proved an enormously powerful work.

The concert began with Olivier Messiaen’s “Apparition de l’eglise eternelle” (Vision of the Church Eternal). I confess, the rapture many enthusiasts find in this composer’s music has, with a few exceptions, passed me by. But at St. John’s Sunday, Bradley’s committed performance showed me what the work was all about. The cathedral’s space allowed Bradley to display Messiaen’s ecstatic vision as increasingly forceful dissonances suddenly blossoming into brighter, more open sounds.

Fully as moving were cellist John Marshall and pianist Kendall Feeney in Messiaen’s prayerful “Louange a l’eternite de Jesus” (Praise for the Eternity of Jesus). The cathedral’s acoustics, which act like a blotter in most chamber music, actually enhanced this work’s meditative loneliness.

The program’s two vocal works demonstrated the importance of selecting an artist for just the right voice quality to suit a given work. Andre Jolivet’s “Suite liturgique” is an odd blend of Middle Eastern melody and impressionist washes of tone color. Soprano Darnell Preston brought a combination of richness and clarity to Jolivet’s exotic mixture.

Tamara Schupman’s soprano is lighter, and she provided a childlike vulnerability and innocence to Lili Boulanger’s touching “Pie Jesu.”

Bradley, Marshal, harpist Leslie Stratton Norris and Barbara Cantlon (playing both oboe and English horn) were sensitive collaborators with the two singers.

Texts for the vocal works would have been a welcome addition to the printed program.