NEW YORK, NY–On May 12, 2023, Sono Luminus releases Man Up / Man Down, the debut release from Constellation Men’s Ensemble (CME). Featured on the album are two world premiere recordings, both commissioned by the group for their annual new music weekend, NOVA-New. Original. Vocal. Art.: Robert Maggio’s title work, addressing the subject of masculine identity in the 21st century, and Jeffrey Derus’s HOME, set to a text by Carl Sandburg that depicts a mother rocking her baby to sleep. David Lang’s manifesto, the text of which was assembled by the composer from the results of a Google search for “I want to be with someone who,” rounds out the album. Man Up / Man Down is available for pre-order here.
The Sono Luminus package for Man Up / Man Down includes both CD and Pure Audio Blu-ray with 9.1 Auro-3D and 5.1 Surround Sound versions, as well as the mShuttle application containing FLAC, WAV, and MP3 audio files.
A link to the media-only download for Man Up / Man Down is available HERE: https://www.sonoluminus.com/store/manup-mandown.
Constellation Men’s Ensemble was begun in 2013 by a group of friends from Northwestern University who were passionate about vocal music and looking to build community around singing, leading to the group’s unofficial motto: “Music & Brotherhood.” With those beginnings, the group naturally gravitated to an interest in the topic of masculine identity. Their commission of Robert Maggio’s Man Up / Man Down began with multiple in-depth conversations with CME’s Ryan Townsend Strand and Kyle Sackett, his collaborators. The composer explains:
“We wanted this new choral work to explore how masculine identity takes shape in our evolving world; how our personal histories of family, race, religion, education, status, exposure, geography, etc. affect the formation of our male identities. We also wanted to examine the societal pressures to maintain a certain male identity, even if that identity doesn’t feel true.”
One of the starting points for the work was an exhibit Sackett had seen at Richmond College called “Man Up! Man Down! Images of Masculinity…,” the catalog for which featured a quote from American sociologist Michael Kimmel, author of the book Masculinity In America: A Cultural History. Maggio created a framework for the piece using texts from Kimmel’s work that tell the story of a young skateboarder who gets recruited by white supremacists, interspersing them with texts by poet Rachel Girty and poets Tony Hoagland and Jericho Brown, as well as responses to questionnaires sent by Strand and Sackett to diverse collections of friends asking about masculinity.
Maggio’s music alternates between stark settings that suggest a straitjacket of cultural compulsion and a much more lyrical and expressive vein: the siren song of other modes of behavior. The former prevails in his setting of Kimmel’s texts. As Rachel Girty’s words succinctly put it: “How it feels to be shaped by hardness, / to have to grow to fit its shape.” A text by poet Tony Hoagland called “Jet” is a lyrical high point: inscrutable images piled on top of one other perfectly convey the collision of powerful feelings with emotional incoherence. Maggio’s closing text is “West Point,” which discovers that even such a bastion of masculinity is filled with conflicting and unreconciled images of what a man ought to be.
Contrasting with this discussion of masculinity is another commissioned world premiere recording, HOME by Jeffrey Derus, a very sensitive and lyrical rendering of a Carl Sandburg poem about a mother rocking a “restless and angry” child to sleep. Both Man Up / Man Down and HOME were commissioned for a NOVA concert called “Humanhood,” and given that theme, Derus wanted “to pull on a moment I often lean on in my adulthood; the moments of my own mother singing to me as a child.” The final piece on the album, David Lang’s manifesto, was written for a concert centered on the general theme of love. The composer assembled the text from the results of a Google search for “I want to be with someone who,” and, selecting only the most universal of the responses, he created a list that reads almost like a credo. The setting begins simply, surrounded by silences, but the texture becomes more involved as more voices are heard, effectively conveying both commonality and uniqueness within the universal desire to be loved.
TRACK LIST:
Jeffrey Derus (b. 1990)
HOME [4:50]
Robert Maggio (b. 1964)
1. Skate Park Guy 1 [1:16]
2. All the Silences [2:51]
3. Interlude I: Manhood in the 21st Century [0:51]
4. Skate Park Guy 2 [1:06]
5. Jet [4:12]
Soloists: Matthew Brennan, Micah Dingler
6. Interlude II: Refrains and Misconceptions [2:32]
Soloists: Matthew Cramer, Ian Prichard
7. Skate Park Guy 3 [1:14]
8. Flower Beds [5:39]
9. Interlude III: A life just like their fathers’ [3:11]
10. Skate Park Guy 4 [1:18]
11. West Point [4:41]
Soloist: Ryan Townsend Strand
david lang (b. 1957)
manifesto [4:08]
Soloists: Carl Alexander, Dario Amador-Lage, Ryan Townsend Strand
Total Time: [37:58]
ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE:
Constellation Men’s Ensemble is a Chicago-based vocal group dedicated to creating distinct performances in unique spaces, empowering the next generation of singers through educational engagement, and expanding the repertoire for men’s vocal music by commissioning new works from both emerging and established composers.
Since 2019, Constellation has partnered with other local nonprofits to raise awareness and funding for impactful organizations to the Chicagoland community through their Community Uplift program. Partner organizations to date include Center on Halsted, Boys & Girls Club of Metropolitan Chicago, Fostering Dignity, and the Alzheimer’s Association of Illinois.
CME is the 2019 winner of The American Prize in Choral Performance, professional division.
www.constellationensemble.org
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.