New Omni Video of Juno Duo Performing Goss

Composer Stephen Goss may be familiar to at least some readers follow this site, particularly where guitar performances are concerned. He was one of the composers included in an Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts guitar recital by Xuefei Yang performed here this past February (a recital that, sadly, I was unable to attend due to a previous commitment). As a result, my most recent encounter with Goss took place the preceding January, when a Live from St. Mark’s video presented a performance by members of the Pre-College Guitar Honors Quartet at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music playing his arrangement of the opening section of the second movement of the first symphony by Gustav Mahler.

This morning OMNI on-Location released its latest video, providing the opportunity to appreciate Goss as a composer, rather than an arranger. The selection was “Rosie Probert and Captain Cat,” one of the movements from Under Milk Wood Songs. These are settings of texts from Under Milk Wood, which poet Dylan Thomas created as a radio drama broadcast in 1954. It was subsequently adapted for stage performance, which is how I first encountered it.

Soprano Isabella Hulbert singing the role of Rosie Probert, accompanied by Maryna Vosmirova on guitar (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Captain Cat is an old blind sea captain who has outlived practically everyone he came to know. Most of them are his deceased shipmates, but one of them is Rosie Probert. She was the lover that he lost; and, over the course of the drama, she appears in his dreams. Hers is the voice sung in “Rosie Probert and Captain Cat,” performed by soprano Isabella Hulbert. Goss’s score requires that the vocalist also play violin. Hulbert was accompanied by guitarist Maryna Vosmirova.

Under Milk Wood is not so much a drama as it is a reflection on the inhabitants of a small Welsh fishing town. True to his ribald reputation, Thomas named the town “Llareggub” (which is “buggerall” spelt backwards). Nevertheless, there is an engaging wistfulness to the narrative (at least in the production I saw many years ago); and Goss fond just the right way to turn that wistfulness into music. Vosmirova knew just how to capture that wistfulness in her accompaniment; but the essence of the performance depended on Hulbert, whose command of Thomas’ text could not have been better.

This new video is a little less than six and one-half minutes in duration. Nevertheless, Thomas was one of those poets that could convey more and more with less and less. (It is hard to imagine R. Buckminster Fuller taking interest in Thomas’ work, but I would not want to second-guess his interests in drama!) Personally, I enjoyed the fact that this video reminded me of my previous encounters with Under Milk Wood.