The beautiful, tragic song My Sister’s Country has the breath-taking impact of a gut punch. Composer Claire Cowan uses beguilingly simple chords to set Rhian Gallagher’s moving poetry, describing the result as “hymn or ritual; a place of comfort to cradle the weight of the small but heavy words”.
The song is one of 21 on a new album, 21 x 21: Beneath the Trees, by 21 women composers of Aotearoa, setting words by our female poets. The listening experience is intense. Cultural worlds, stories, grief and love – these short songs carry enormous emotional freight.
Soprano Jenny Wollerman, who conceived and commissioned the 21 x 21 project, performs the songs with pianist Jian Liu. The album demonstrates the magnitude of women’s expressive ambitions; these are not pretty, feminine songs, though a female, sometimes feminist, sensibility is present.
Mere Boynton’s Āio opens the album. The timeless lament is, Boynton says, “a karanga (call) to the universe to return the divine feminine to wāhine and to Papatūanuku, Earth Mother”.
Sometimes the passions are fierce, sometimes gentle. Celeste Oram set a short poem by Jo Randerson in her song The Power of Moss, using a melismatic line and understated accompaniment. “Right now, it’s not the power of the sword we need,” Oram says.
Among those represented are the composers Dame Gillian Whitehead, the late Jenny McLeod, Salina Fisher and Leonie Holmes. Writers include Fiona Farrell, Dinah Hawken, Lauris Edmond and Katherine Mansfield.
Two particularly intense songs are held until near the end. New York-based composer Leila Adu-Gilmore, a Ghanaian New Zealander, has used part of Tusiata Avia’s formidable poem Massacre. In a brilliant song full of pain and conflicted feelings, two Christchurch-raised artists confront Aotearoa’s racism. For Riven, Roma Potiki’s dramatic words inspired Eve de Castro-Robinson’s passionate song, dedicated to her late husband. Arresting percussive piano effects accompany images of death and fire.
Many songs in 21 x 21 find evocative metaphors in nature. Composer Aiono Manu Fa’aea created the Samoan words for her beautiful Ala Mai Moana, which flows like the ocean she addresses. The final song moves indoors, a setting by Maria Grenfell of Elizabeth Smither’s witty poem, Listening to the Goldberg Variations. The dreamlike narrative, little hints of Bach and a final baroque flourish make a great conclusion to an astonishingly rich album.
Wollerman’s stylistically versatile singing and impeccable diction communicate the collection’s variety and Liu’s exquisite piano sonorities are essential to the storytelling.
Launched in December alongside a book of scores of the songs, published by Wai-te-ata Music Press, 21 x 21 is an invaluable addition to the canon of New Zealand song. l
21x21: Beneath the Trees, with Jenny Wollerman (soprano) Jian Liu (piano) (Atoll)
