Echos
Listen to Kristee’s debut solo album with Crossover Records
Echos
As long as our human experience has been shared, we have shared it through music.
Driven by a deep-rooted desire to communicate, Kristee is a true believer that a good song is a good song, regardless of its genre or origin.
Drawing from Art Song, Musical Theatre and American popular music - themes of love, loss and hope - we hear these ECHOS . They serve as reminders that while the musical styles might have changed, our human experience remains constant.
With genre adventurous programming spanning 120 years and 4 languages, Kristee explores these echos in her debut solo recording.
Each selection drawn from ‘classical’ traditions finds ECHOS in ‘popular’ music …
*see below for song pairings and english translations
Le temps des lilas (Chausson / Bouchor)
The time for lilac and the time for roses will return no more this spring;
the time for lilac and the time for roses is past, the time for carnations too.
The wind has changed, the skies are sullen, and no longer shall we roam to gather
the flowering lilac and beautiful rose; the spring is sad and cannot bloom.
Oh sweet and joyous springtime that came last year to bathe us in sun, our flower of love is so far faded,
that your kiss, alas, cannot rouse it!
And what do you do? No blossoming flowers, no bright sun, and no cool shade;
the time for lilac and the time for roses with our love has perished for evermore.
Translation © Richard Stokes, from A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
** ECHOS with: Spring can really hang you up the most **
Aprile (Tosti / Pagliara)
Do you not smell in the air the perfume that Spring breathes out?
Do you not hear in your soul the sound of a new, enticing voice?
It's April! It's the season of love!
Come, lovely one, to the flowery meadow!
Your foot will tread among violets, you will wear roses and bluebells,
and the white butterflies will flutter around your black hair.
It's April! It's the season of love!
Please come, my lovely one, to the flowery meadow!
Translation © John Glen Paton (lieder.net 2000)
Reprinted with permission from the LiederNet Archive
** ECHOS with: It might as well be spring / Hurry! It’s lovely up here **
Mond, so gehst du wieder auf - (Korngold / Lothar)
Moon, thus you rise once more over the dark valley of unwept tears!
Teach, teach me not to yearn for her, to make my blood run pale,
Not to suffer this sorrow, caused when two souls part.
See, you shroud yourself in mist.
Yet you cannot darken the bright images that the night arouses in me with wilder and fiercer pain.
Ah! I feel in the depths of my being: the heart that has suffered separation will burn eternally.
Translations by Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)
** ECHOS with: Stars and the Moon **
Verzagen (Brahms / Lemcke)
I sit by the shore of the raging sea searching there for rest,
I gaze at the waves’ motion in numb resignation.
The waves crash on the shore, they foam and vanish,
The clouds, the winds above, they come and go.
You, unruly heart, be silent and surrender yourself to rest;
You should find comfort in winds and waves — why are you weeping?
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)
** ECHOS with: Lost in the waves **
Morgen! (Strauss / Mackay)
And tomorrow the sun will shine again and on the path that I shall take,
It will unite us, happy ones, again, amid this same sun-breathing earth ...
And to the shore, broad, blue-waved, we shall quietly and slowly descend,
Speechless we shall gaze into each other’s eyes, and the speechless silence of bliss shall fall on us ...
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)
** ECHOS with: Somewhere over the rainbow **