Show Me The Way is a new double CD from baritone Will Liverman, pianist Jonathan King and various collaborators featuring vocal works by female American composers.  It draws on a wide range of influences from Ella Fitzgerald to Will’s mother.

There are several song cycles; some composed for the album or not previously recorded.  There’s A Sable Jubilee with music by Jasmine Barnes and text by Tesia Kwarteng.  It’s a celebration of “blackness” in various moods incorporating jazz influences into a complex tonal structure.  It’s beautifully sung by Liverman and very skilfully accompanied by King on piano.

Four Songs by Margaret Bonds sets poems by Edna St. Vincent Millais.  It’s fairly lively though perhaps more in the Great American Songbook mode than the Barnes.  Good of its genre though.

There’s also a Libby Larsen cycle; Machine Head – Ted Burke Poems.  This consists of three varied songs.  “Rexall” is playful, full of 1950s imagery, quotes from The Tennessee Waltz, blues riffs and interjected speech.  It’s fun.  “My Father Intercepts My Trip to Another Planet” is told from a child’s point of view and is not really centred rhythmically or tonally giving a kind of disassociated dream-like feel.  The cycle finishes with “Machine Head” which cheekily explores  a world where machines do everything.

There are individual songs too.  There’s a bouncy version of Ella Fitzgerald’s You Showed Me The Way and Florence Price’s Broadway inflected I Grew A Rose.  There’s darker material.  Kamala Sankaram’s Spell to Turn the World Around sets Kathryn Smith’s dark and bitter poem about the California wildfires with lots of extended piano technique to create an unearthly and disturbing mood.  Worth mentioning that this might well serve as the demonstration track for the technical excellence of the recording.  There’s also Florence Smith’s rather beautiful setting of Langston Hughes’ brilliant Songs to the Dark Virgin.

There are collaborations too.  Liverman is joined by J’nai Bridges for Rene Orth’s complex setting of Sara Teasdale’s A Prayer. “Ah love is a jasmine vine” is a duet from Amy Beach’s 1932 opera Cabildo.  It’s scored for voices and string trio with soprano Nicole Cabell, Lady Jess on violin and Tahira Whittington on cello joining Liverman and King.  It’s pretty conventional but pleasant enough.  Liverman is partnered by Renée Fleming for Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Everything That Ever Was which is based around complex intertwined vocal lines.  The album finishes up with Terry Liverman singing the Livermans’ arrangement of Alma Bazel Androzzo’s If I Can Help Somebody with Will at the piano.

This is a really interesting set of songs and it’s all performed with great skill and feeling.  It’s also exceptionally well recorded with voices and piano captured in detail and balanced beautifully.  It comes with a very comprehensive booklet with far more information than I could include in a review.

It’s a digital release available as MP3 and CD quality and 96kHz/24 bit FLAC.  I listened to the hi-res version which is a pretty good argument for going hi-res!

Catalogue information: Cedille Records CDR 90000 226