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Because - Songs & Spirituals / Mobley, Trotignon
Alpha

Because - Songs & Spirituals / Mobley, Trotignon

$20.99

Details

Composer
Various
Artist
Reginald Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
Format
CD
Label
Alpha
Released
May 26, 2023
Catalog #
ALPHA936
UPC
3760014199363

About

During the long era when Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were creating the musical canon of Western Europe, the songs of enslaved Africans resounded in the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic, expressing pain and longing, but also joy and the desire for freedom. The American countertenor Reginald Mobley - a rising figure in baroque music, notably under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner with whom he sings very regularly - and the French pianist Baptiste Trotignon, winner of numerous awards (Victoires du Jazz, Django d'Or) have combined their talents and sensibilities to celebrate these spirituals and the music of Black composers including Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) and Florence Price (1887-1953), whose beautiful transcriptions and melodies blend with Baptiste Trotignon's subtle arrangements of the famous Sometimes I feel like a motherless child or I got a robe... The melody "Because", composed by Florence Price on a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, inspired the title of the album: Because I had loved so hard (...) Because I had loved so vainly... Why this album? Because...

CONTENTS:

  • anon.: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
  • trad.: Were you there?
  • trad.: I Got a Robe
  • Trotignon: Why
  • Price, Florence: Because
  • trad.: Steal away
  • trad.: Save Me Lord, Save Me
  • trad.: Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard
  • trad.: Nobody knows the trouble I seen
  • Price, Florence: Resignation
  • anon.: A Great Campmeetin'
  • Price, Florence: Sunset
  • trad.: My Lord, What a Mornin'
  • anon.: By an’ by / There is a Balm in Gilead
  • Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield: I Heard It Through the Grapevine
  • anon.: Deep river

REVIEWS:

On their new album Because, American countertenor and early-music specialist Reginald Mobley and French pianist Baptiste Trotignon offer a collection of music from the Renaissance.

No, not that Renaissance.

The album is an updated compendium of Negro spirituals...and art songs published, collected, or written in and around the Harlem Renaissance — a period of revival in Black art, literature, culture, and music that spread from the Manhattan neighborhood throughout the United States and the Western world in the early 20th century...this movement and these songs have impacted American music on a scale that is unsurpassed, from jazz to pop to hip-hop, as well as a significant body of classical repertoire.

With Because, his first solo album, [Mobley] offers a powerful portrait addressing the musical legacy of Black spirituals and the complicated paradoxes contained within them: themes of bondage and salvation, power and tenderness, pain and beauty, spirituality and temporality.

We rarely hear a countertenor wade into this repertoire, and Mobley’s voice, which seems to get better by the year, is wonderfully pristine. Like good champagne, his tone is both effervescent and rich. In 20th-century art songs such as Florence Price’s “Because I Had Loved So Deeply” or Harry Burleigh’s “Jean,” or traditional spirituals like “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” he does not produce sound so much as spin it in long, sumptuous phrases.

As an accompanist and arranger, Trotignon is both resourceful and inventive, and it’s clear that he also lives and breathes this music.

-- Early Music America

Tracklist 17 tracks

  1. 1 Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 03:10
    Track
    1
    Title
    Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    03:10
    Composer
    Traditional
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  2. 2 Were You There? (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 03:48
    Track
    2
    Title
    Were You There? (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    03:48
    Composer
    Traditional
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  3. 3 I Got a Robe (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 02:35
    Track
    3
    Title
    I Got a Robe (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    02:35
    Composer
    Traditional
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  4. 4 Why 02:29
    Track
    4
    Title
    Why
    Duration
    02:29
    Composer
    Baptiste Trotignon
    Performer
    Baptiste Trotignon
  5. 5 Because 01:58
    Track
    5
    Title
    Because
    Duration
    01:58
    Composer
    Florence Beatrice Price
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  6. 6 Steal Away (arr. for voice and piano by P.D. Quigley) 03:40
    Track
    6
    Title
    Steal Away (arr. for voice and piano by P.D. Quigley)
    Duration
    03:40
    Composer
    Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  7. 7 Save Me Lord, Save Me (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 02:05
    Track
    7
    Title
    Save Me Lord, Save Me (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    02:05
    Composer
    Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  8. 8 Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 04:07
    Track
    8
    Title
    Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    04:07
    Composer
    Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  9. 9 Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 03:38
    Track
    9
    Title
    Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    03:38
    Composer
    Baptiste Trotignon, Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  10. 10 Resignation 03:23
    Track
    10
    Title
    Resignation
    Duration
    03:23
    Composer
    Florence Beatrice Price
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  11. 11 A Great Campmeetin' (arr. for voice and piano by A. Trotignon) 02:53
    Track
    11
    Title
    A Great Campmeetin' (arr. for voice and piano by A. Trotignon)
    Duration
    02:53
    Composer
    Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  12. 12 Sunset 02:16
    Track
    12
    Title
    Sunset
    Duration
    02:16
    Composer
    Florence Beatrice Price
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  13. 13 My Lord, What a Morning (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 04:13
    Track
    13
    Title
    My Lord, What a Morning (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    04:13
    Composer
    Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  14. 14 Jean 03:11
    Track
    14
    Title
    Jean
    Duration
    03:11
    Composer
    Henry Thacker Burleigh
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  15. 15 By an' by - There is a Balm in Gilead (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon and H. Burleigh) 04:56
    Track
    15
    Title
    By an' by - There is a Balm in Gilead (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon and H. Burleigh)
    Duration
    04:56
    Composer
    Anonymous
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  16. 16 I Heard it Through the Grapevine 03:08
    Track
    16
    Title
    I Heard it Through the Grapevine
    Duration
    03:08
    Composer
    Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon
  17. 17 Deep River (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon) 03:47
    Track
    17
    Title
    Deep River (arr. for voice and piano by B. Trotignon)
    Duration
    03:47
    Composer
    Traditional
    Performer
    Reginald L. Mobley, Baptiste Trotignon