As the 2023 Big Ears Festival was winding down on Sunday evening, a couple of performances by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra remained: violinist Tessa Lark performing Michael Schachter’s Violin Concerto: Cycle of Life, followed by vocalist Shara Nova performing The Blue Hour. Of course, Cycle of Life was commissioned by the KSO and inspired by a massive glass-and-metal installation of the same name at the Knoxville Museum of Art by sculptor Richard Jolley. It received its premiere by the KSO in performances in 2022 which were reviewed here. The Blue Hour, though, sprang to life quite differently.
The Blue Hour was commissioned by the string ensemble A Far Cry and was a song cycle collaboration among five composers: Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. For the work’s form and substance, the composers settled on taking excerpts from a poem by Carolyn Forché called “On Earth” that was contained in a book of poems, Blue Hour. That poetic form was abecedarian, a bit unusual in that every line references a letter of the alphabet in exploring a blur of thoughts and poetic images. The work premiered in Washington, D.C. in 2017.
The intriguing, multi-textural instrumental score, performed by a chamber-size ensemble of KSO string players, seemed to have a delicious mix of eclectic influences that ran the gamut from pointed frigid dissonance to the specific warmth of a J.S. Bach Brandenburg Concerto. Strangely, the work is substantively seamless, with each composer’s style surrendering a bit of its uniqueness, while retaining character and giving meaning to The Blue Hour’s overall musical journey. The string textures and effects—both dreamlike, mellifluous bowing and jangled pizzicato—were beautifully handled by conductor Aram Demirjian and the ensemble. Their focus in embracing the changing moods and varying degrees of lyricism was nothing if not miraculous.
Elevating the already lofty ideals of the instrumental score was Shara Nova’s distinctive multi-faceted voice which has both lush and crystalline sides. Her projections seemed to magically turn from quiet, subtle moments of introspection that relied on electronic effects to powerfully dramatic surges of emotion that required no added character. Magical, too, was Nova’s vocal control that could open ears with its deliberate vibrato, yet sooth with a vibrato-less purity of tone.
Admittedly, at roughly 75 minutes in length, The Blue Hour requires a bit of time and space adjustment from its audience. But, time and space are exactly what Big Ears provides—assuming one doesn’t get lost in the choices and the overwhelming magic of the festival experience. Mesmerizing, indeed.
