Music Review: enSRQ stirs imagination in streaming concert

Gayle Williams

Correspondent

EnsembleNEWSRQ served as our guide once again in the adventures with new music in Monday’s program “Solitude and Suffrage,” performed live online from the First Congregational Church and available for an extended period on the group’s website ensrq.org.

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Two central works on the program featured the impressive vocal dexterity of mezzo soprano Thea Lobo. “Fugitive Songs” (1950) by Ulysses Kay is a set of eight songs. The three selected for this program, “Evensong,” “The Fugitives” and “Sentence,” are based on texts by early 20th-century poets Ridgely Torrence, Florence Wilkinson and Witter Bynner, respectively. Here we did have familiar musical language, easy to sink into and absorb the meaning of the text. Lobo’s collaborator was pianist Jesse Martins, who fit easily as her partner in reaching for the deeper phrasing and meaning of the score.