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Composer(s) |
Performer(s) |
Length |
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| Arjuna's Dilemma |
Douglas J Cuomo
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Robert Black
Ethel
Kathleen Supove
Amit Chatterjee
Tony Boutte
Anonymous 4
Badal Roy
Bob Franceschini
Alan Johnson
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Douglas J. Cuomo has gathered an exciting array of artists from points East and West for his chamber opera Arjuna's Dilemma, which tells the story of the Bhagavad Gita in music that seamlessly melds classical, jazz, and Indian traditions. Indian singer Amit Chatterjee (Zawinul Syndicate), tenor Tony Boutte, and members of Anonymous 4 are accompanied by a ten-piece ensemble that includes the Ethel string quartet, pianist Kathleen Supove, and bassist Robert Black of the Bang on a Can All Stars. Tabla player Badal Roy (Miles Davis, John McLaughlin) and tenor saxophonist Bob Franceschini, a giant of Latin jazz, are the featured instrumental soloists.
A work of both sweeping grandeur and piercing intimacy, Arjuna's Dilemma addresses ancient themes that remain startlingly topical: the conflicting claims of conscience and duty; the search for self-knowledge in a changing world. Arjuna's Dilemma showcases breathtaking vocal turns and virtuosic ensemble and solo playing. The piece utilizes North Indian performance styles, melodic structures, tuning systems, time signatures and rhythmic patterns alongside Western instrumentation, harmonies and forms. North Indian vocals co-mingle with a Western tenor and four-part choral writing, with references to both modern vocal styles and Byzantine and Gregorian chant. Improvisation is common to both musical worlds, with Chatterjee, Roy and Franceschini each using their respective improvisatory traditions to call into being the ecstatic, sublime, and sometimes terrifying world of Arjuna's Dilemma.
Douglas J. Cuomo has composed highly acclaimed and original music for concert and theatrical stages, television, and film. His compositions range from well-known television themes - for Sex and the City and NOW with Bill Moyers, among others - to evening-length theater works. Arjuna's Dilemma is preceded on disc by Cuomo's Kyrie for And on Earth, Peace (2007) commissioned by the vocal ensemble Chanticleer and recorded by the group on Warner Music.
During 2008, Arjuna's Dilemma will be produced in New York by Music-Theatre Group at BAM's Next Wave Festival on Nov. 5, 7, and 8.
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The Washington Post
In this opera, he blends classical Indian singing, jazz improv, the busy minimalist-style patterns that appear to have entered the bloodstream of so many composers and the jewel-like tones of a four-part women's chorus, all worked into a seamless whole, like a golden Indian brocade.
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by Anne Midgette
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New York Magazine
For Arjuna, Cuomo drew on his jazz background and fascination with North Indian singing, following the title character’s crisis of conscience on the eve of battle. Cuomo says he’s been surprisingly welcome in the new-music crowd. “I think the time when people would look down on [TV] is gone,” he says. “If I hadn’t done all this film and television work, I’d be a much less interesting composer.”
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by Rebecca Milzoff
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Cleveland Plain Dealer
My five selections this week travel far and wide: first, an opera by the composer of the theme for "Sex and the City"; a potpourri of Latin music performed by the hottest conductor of the moment, Gustavo Dudamel, with a top-notch Venezuelan youth orchestra; secular choral works by Schubert; soprano Mirelli Freni singing Puccini; and violin concertos by Beethoven and Clement in elegant performances by Rachel Barton Pine.
Composers face dilemmas whenever they place notes on paper (or computer). As they aim to write music that fulfills their artistic desires, they seek to make a feasible living. Few composers thrive on both counts.
An exception is Douglas J. Cuomo, whose main theme for TV's "Sex and the City" no doubt is earning him royalties galore. But Cuomo is also a composer of serious intentions, as his haunting chamber opera "Ajuna's Dilemma" makes clear.
The work's roots lie in "Bhagavad Gita," the Sanskrit text that explores a discussion between the divine Krishna and worldly Ajuna, who searches his soul to come to terms with obligations as a warrior.
Cuomo's background in jazz and ethnomusicology appear to have given him the ideal grounding to create such an opera. His music embraces both Western and Indian classical music traditions, with voices used in notated chants and improvised episodes.
The score is a mesmerizing blend of vocal and instrumental possibilities. Arujuna is assigned to a tenor who must negotiate high-lying lines, tender gestures and dramatic points, all the while singing in Sanskrit. The role of Krishna is divided between an Indian vocalist and a chorus - on this recording the remarkable female ensemble Anonymous 4 - that sings in English.
However "Ajuna's Dilemma" unfolds in the theater, it is a gripping experience on compact disc. The excellent performers include tenor Tony Boutte as Arujuna, Amit Chatterjee as Krishna and an instrumental ensemble that features the adventurous string quartet known as Ethel. Cuomo doesn't need sex or a city to reveal his compositional imagination.
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by Donald Rosenberg
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Soundcheck, WNYC
Pick of the Week, June 11, 2008
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by John Schaefer
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New Sounds, WNYC
What Cuomo does is what the best of today's composers, from the late Lou Harrison to Osvaldo Golijov, have done: he's developed a lingua franca that is international enough to allow the speakers of those different languages to communicate� The music seems to occupy a space that is not bound by geography or chronology.
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by John Schaefer
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