SFP Art of Song Series Begins with Phan

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances began its Art of Song series with a recital by tenor Nicholas Phan, accompanied at the piano by Myra Huang. The title of the program was Fellow Citizens, which also appeared in the program booklet in the title for the program notes, “What Home Really Means: Songs of Migration, Belonging, and our Fellow Citizens.” My initial impression was that this would be a “program with a message,” a phrase which almost always triggers the (very) old joke, “If I have a message, I’ll send it by Western Union.”

That said, Phan divided his program into nine sections, each with a title of its own:

1. The Melting Pot
2. The Journey
3. These Strangers
4. The Songs We Carried
5. The Beautiful
6. The Welcome
7. The Journey Part 2
8. Citizens
9. Those Who Migrated

This may have struck many as a massive undertaking. Nevertheless, Phan interleaved the songs with brief narration; and the program, as a whole, proceeded at an engaging clip that never led one to look at one’s watch.

Mind you, I was a bit skeptical to discover that the first of those sections was devoted entirely to Irving Berlin’s best-known song: “God Bless America.” When I was growing up, one of my earliest experiences was watching the Army–McCarthy Hearings on television, part of a demagogic effort to identify and punish anyone who was (or who ever had been) a member of the Communist Party. Watching Joseph McCarthy was my first experience of how politics could be downright brutal. Things seemed to turn around with the election of President John F, Kennedy, but they were kicked back into the gutter when Kennedy was assassinated. In that historical context, my thoughts about Berlin’s song are not particularly sanguine!

Nevertheless, my wife and I now take every election seriously. We review our sample ballots and discuss our choices. When possible, we then take our completed ballots over the City Hall, rather than putting them in the mail. As far as I am concerned, we honor the “nuts and bolts” of governance; but that means that, in that sort of context, I find it difficult not to cringe when listening to “God Bless America!” (I have not yet decided whether that that music is the first or last refuge of a scoundrel!)

The good news last night was that Phan’s delivery of Berlin’s song was decidedly low-key. This was a far cry from the rhetorical stances taken by singers from past decades; but the mood was more meditative, suggesting that this would be a program that took citizenship seriously. This was particularly the case with the West Coast premiere of Shawn Okpebholo’s The Beautiful, a song cycle that had been commissioned by Music Accord, Inc. explicitly for performance by Phan and Huang.

African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, best known for the words “I know why the caged bird sings” (artist unknown, published in White Side of a Black Subject, by Norman B. Wood in 1897, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

What particularly struck me was Phan’s approach to interleaving past and present. Over the course of the performance, three songs by Franz Schubert (“Der Wanderer,” D. 649, “Pilgerweise,” D. 789.” and “Der Wanderer an den Mond,” D. 870) interleaved among far more recent compositions. In that context, I found myself most drawn to the final selection on the program, Florence Price’s “Sympathy,” setting a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar best known for the opening of the third stanza: “I know why the caged bird sings.”

That said, I have accounted for only a modest portion of Phan’s entire recital. Mind  you, nothing about last night’s performance felt as if things were going on for too long. However, I would prefer if readers did not feel that way about my efforts to account for the occasion!