Shorestein’s Song Cycle of Old Testament Love

courtesy of Jazz Promo Services

Tomorrow Madre Vaca Records will release its latest album entitled Shir Hashirim. This is an eight-movement song cycle composed by Benjamin Shorstein. Those familiar with Hebrew will probably easily recognize that this is the title of one of the books of the Old Testament, usually translated into English as Song of Songs; and this is the closest the Old Testament ever gets to a passionate love story, reflecting both dialogue and internal monologues of the male and female protagonists. The album is currently available for processing advance orders through a Bandcamp Web page.

The Old Testament text is divided into eight chapters, each of which is given its own movement in Shorstein’s composition. They are sung by the composer’s sister, soprano Rebecca Shorstein, who is accompanied at the piano by Alden Gatt. Sadly, this album leaves much to be desired.

In the first place it does not take long for the attentive listener to recognize that, for the most part, composer Shorstein is doing little more than hanging notes on syllables. (I have to confess that I am familiar with this technique through my own lame efforts at composition back in my twenties; and, just to “come clean” about that practice, I applied it to the Shir Hashirim text. The only good news from my end is that I confined myself to what I felt were “key excerpts,” rather than trying to account for every last word.)

In the absence of an overall structure, vocalist Shorstein works her way from one syllable to the next. Sadly, her sense of pitch is not always on target, even when she is following notes coming from the piano. Her overall vocal quality is not much better, suggesting that she never figured out how to phrase her passages and endow them with appropriate dispositions. There are also occasional ventures beyond her tessitura that tend to come across as cringe-inducing.

According to the Song of Songs Wikipedia page, there is an abundance of settings from at least portions of this Biblical text. They cover a wide extent of music history with Heinrich Schütz at one end and the Bat For Lashes rock group at the other. I am reminded of my past in the technology world when one of my colleagues had to review an article for publication; he described it as “filling a well-needed gap.” That description may account for where Shir Hashirim fits into the vocal repertoire!