ÉROS | HARP COLUMN - 10/10 REVIEW
Harpist Joseph Rebman has dedicated his career to championing rising modern composers. As a composer himself, he fosters the creation of new works by offering masterclasses on how to write idiomatically for the harp, which often remains a mystery to many aspiring composers. Thirty works have been written specifically for his ravishing style, and he chooses seven of the best, plus two of his own for a striking debut album, Éros.
The album opens with the nostalgic calm of Carly Sage’s evocative Drinking Coffee on the Front Porch on a Sunny Winter Morning. She calls it a “love letter” to blissful moments spent with her mother. Rebman’s playing feels like an invitation to a place less static than is suggested and more thoughtful. This is especially so in the following work which acts like a response, Nailah Nombeko’s A Day in Columbus Park – Quiet Morning. Rebman is best in conjuring a feeling of repose, as if a Tai Chi practitioner moving in slow motion.
That being said, he also can paint moods like in Kyle Wernke’s Four Scenes from Marquette, MI.With the sensibility of a storyteller,Rebman captures the cinematic quality of this piece, breathing life into every nuance and mood. His style has breadth, venturing from the most intimate to the intense in a balancing act of expectation.
This serves him well in the title track, an original called Éros. Rebman uses as his source material a music box to explore the myriad emotions of a lover’s betrayal. Beginning as a tender waltz, soon sharp and uncomfortable emotions rise to the surface.
Most powerful is a seven-movement work called Stay For Me. Rebman originally set poetry by A.E. Housman for baritone and ensemble that tells the story of a gay couple separated by war. In creating a solo harp transcription, he found the tiny yet impassioned vignettes followed the varied and distinct stages of grief, originally developed by psychologist Elizabeth Kübler Ross.
Daniel Perttu’s luscious yet mysterious Serenade follows, like gentle caressing breezes at night. In the poignant Water Triptych, Mackenzie Jacob LaMont explores the richer sonorities and extended techniques of the harp. Redman luxuriates in the sounds, giving them space to breathe.
Redman is at his absolute best in Catherine Neville’s A Year Later. She calls it a “meditation on living through momentous historical change” but rather than dwelling in loss and grief, the piece is filled with hope and optimism, a world that this incredibly talented musician offers us as a gift.
Perhaps this is summed up best in Glittering Afternoon by Seolhee (Snow) Kim, a work all about delight and the unexpected, those small yet transformative things that evince a radiance to our ordinary days. When you listen to Joseph Rebman’s album, you too will experience just that.
