NYCR: Parlando wraps season with a laudable encore of cabaret music

Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, conductor Ian Niederhoffer, and Parlando (Crios Photography)

From smoky Berlin nightclubs to today’s jazz clubs, cabaret walks the line between satire and story. In the season-ending concert by the New York-based chamber orchestra Parlando, the music “was full of style, expression and historical and social significance,” writes New York Classical Review. Conducted by founder Ian Niederhoffer, the April 22 concert was the second of a two-season collaboration with soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, exploring cabaret’s blend of sharp-edged social commentary and deeply personal storytelling. The program included Ernst Krenek’s jazzy Fantasie on Jonny spielt auf, Hanns Eisler’s punchy Kleine Sinfonie, Abel Meeropol’s haunting Strange Fruit, and the world premiere orchestration of Aaron Davis’s Zombie Blizzard.

Niederhoffer pinned modern cabaret music to the impact American military bands—notably James Reese Europe’s Harlem Hellfighters—had in Europe during WWI, explaining it as a mix of jazz and modern classical.

On Strange Fruit:

Brueggergosman-Lee was a welcome sight on stage to begin with, and she sang this with terrific musicality and pinpoint expression. Her sound had a rich throatiness, and she modulated it through each verse, pinching the last words into a kind of serrated blade. Moved out of the cabaret and into the concert hall, this was a superb set piece, a demonstration that art songs can and should be meant for the public.

On Zombie Blizzard:

As songs, each had a fine, masterful shape that followed the direction of the text and found natural heights and endpoints. The larger-scale form was also excellent, the entire thing following a clear journey from self-possession to a moving expression of how life feels after those around us pass on.

Read the full piece here.