“Graceful and Dramatic” Three Elegies

A sharp-eyed reader pointed out to me that the New York Stringer online mag­a­zine reviewed not only the June 5, 2007 per­for­mance of my Sand­burg songs, but also the March 9, 2007 con­cert at the Sym­phony Space Thalia. In that March con­cert, Aurora Bore­alis per­formed my Three Ele­gies. Again, critic David Katz had some very nice things to say:

Of the nine pieces per­formed, three had vocal com­po­nents. Par­tic­u­larly lovely were Three Ele­gies com­posed by Richard Rus­sell, set­tings of poems by Emily Dick­in­son, Chid­iock Tich­borne and Hart Crane. These grace­ful and dra­matic airs had in com­mon the theme of loss and accep­tance. Tiffany Du Mouchelle, soprano, had a lovely voice and clear enun­ci­a­tion. Stephen Solook, per­cus­sion­ist, lent inten­sity to the Dick­in­son poem, and, play­ing marim­bas, pro­vided the melodic under­pin­nings for the other two poems.

In repost­ing this para­graph, I’ve cor­rected a few of the typos from the orig­i­nal review. The whole thing can be found here.