Taking at bow at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s world premiere of “Captivating Personas” are artist Quinn Bryant and composer James Lee III. Music Director Jonathon Heyward led the concert. Photo by Michael Andor Brodeur/The Washington Post.
In Sunday’s (6/16) Washington Post, Michael Andor Brodeur writes, “Just before the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra launched into its final concert of the season on Saturday at Strathmore, music director Jonathon Heyward offered the theme of reflection as a binding agent for the evening’s four selections,” which included Jessie Montgomery’s 2016 “Records From a Vanishing City,” Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” with soprano Christine Goerke, Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” and the world premiere of James Lee III’s “Captivating Personas,” commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony. “The paintings of Baltimore artist Quinn Bryant inspired composer James Lee III’s ‘Captivating Personas’… The world premiere … was augmented by large projections of paintings by Bryant, whose sumptuously painted portraits of Black women combine classical portraiture with a photographic-feeling candor. Lee’s four movements … directly referenced four of Bryant’s paintings, and wryly evoked their thick brushstrokes, deep colors, historical echoes and unabashed optimism. A thick wall of trombones and horns was punctured by beautiful plumes of bass clarinet and piccolo in the first movement. Marimbas and trombones seemed to suggest the sublime side-eye dealt by the muse of ‘Attitude.’… And in the finale, Heyward played up the contrast between Lee’s mechanistic churn and Bryant’s sinuous figuration.”
