The Song Also Rises
Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
Six selected songs (arr. Sarah Watts)
Malcolm J. Solomon (b. 1968)
The Mindlessness of it All (2020)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Sorrow Songs Op.57 (1904, arr. Sarah Watts)
David N. Baker (1931-2016)
And Then… (2001)
Sarah Watts (bass clarinet)
Kim Davenport (piano)
rec. 2025, The Piano Studio, Tacoma, USA
Alea Recording AR010 [61]

This is the artist-led Alea Recording label’s ninth release and, as it was founded in 1997 by Duo Alea, the father/daughter bass clarinet and piano duo of Michael and Kimberly Davenport, its content is largely dedicated to this relatively unusual instrumental combination. With The Song Also Rises bass clarinettist Sarah Watts and pianist Kim Davenport focus on a programme that showcases works by black composers.

Florence Price has only very recently become a more familiar name on recordings, though with much of her work still unpublished there is clearly much more to discover. With this recording Sarah Watts has arranged six of her songs, including Go Down Moses as Price’s own version of the famous Negro Spiritual. Watt’s playing is faithful to the original songs to the point of playing from the vocal score and taking the inflections of text and phrase into account. You might not think of the bass clarinet as being ideal for communicating vocally expressive lyricism but Watts proves us wrong, using the range of her instrument as a kind of aeolian cello and soaring over the accompaniments to great effect. Price’s songs are poignant in mood, having a kind of music-hall charm to go along with their art-song ambitions.   

Malcolm Soloman is an award-winning composer, director, screenwriter, and independent filmmaker, and clearly a name to be reckoned with. The Mindlessness of it All is an immediate contrast with Florence Price’s songs, driving out all sentiment with music that was the composer’s response to tragic events: “after the Sandy Hook shootings… Then George Floyd happened and Breonna Taylor… [I] want this music to make people feel anger and sadness around the circumstances that brought the piece to life.” The first of two movements is urgent and vehement in its discourse, the troubled textures and rhythms of increasing conflict unresolved by doom-laden darkness in the second. There are echoes of Messiaen’s nocturnal Oiseaux in this movement’s opening minutes but with added menace – a space out of which you want to be released, rather than one under a magic spell. The bass clarinet emerges towards defiance, but the extreme low notes of the piano continue as an eternal reminder that the feet are still shackled, a brief coda, mournful despite its major tonality, echoing into timelessness.         

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s combination of a Romantic idiom with traditional folksong is nicely represented in his collection of six Sorrow Songs, Op. 57 on texts by Christina Rossetti. The lyrical nature of the bass clarinet is exploited once again, alongside a range that covers just about any voice type. As the title suggests, the mood in this collection is one of deliciously elegiac mournfulness, but even in accompaniments that drip with descending harmonies and melodies with unabashed emotive weight this is a cycle that works very well as an instrumental duo, and one can easily imagine applause from the composer equalling that of any appreciative audience.

David N. Barker’s background is in jazz, and after a “sombre and languid” opening for the solo bass clarinet, the first of three movements of And Then… soon enters a world of syncopated counterpoint, strong bass lines and jazz-inflected harmonies. This movement, The Song Also Rises allows for improvisatory sections cheek-by-jowl with one oddly decorative section, but the wide-ranging freedoms in this piece in its entirety can be appreciated if you just let it flow over you and stop worrying about sonata form. On Wings of Song is soulfully cinematic, with a single character departing through a lonely, rain-soaked street followed by a montage of warmer memories and an entertaining adventure along the way – with jazz you can travel anywhere. A fitting close to the programme in the finale, The Apprentice’s Sources, takes us on flights of virtuosity and a final slide upwards and ever onwards.       

Well recorded, superbly performed and presenting a cornucopia of mostly unknown music, this is a fine production that is well worth anyone’s time. Sarah Watts is a long-time campaigner for new music and neglected repertoire and this recording is very much in line with her spirit of exploration and discovery. The synergy between Sarah and Kim Davenport is seamless and rewarding and I hope we get to hear them together again soon.

Dominy Clements