CD Review | American Spiritual (Leaf Music, 2024)

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Leaf Music
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American Spiritual
Michael Lee, piano
Leaf Music, 2024

Newfoundland native Michael Lee plays an interesting selection of rarely-heard piano music by African-American composers Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Robert Nathaniel Dett.

Lee’s solid, technically reliable, and musically attentive playing is evident in Price’s Piano sonata in E minor, which is a mix of romantic sonatas with echoes of gospel music. A standard, pleasant score rendered in very clean, confident performance by the pianist. The second movement starts with a beautiful, gospel-sounding melody sensitively played by the emerging Canadian pianist. Price’s playful tunes and melodic invention present a lovely mix of gospel and romantic styles. The final movement, Scherzo, hints at the influences of Scriabin (Fantasy), and modal melodic inflections reminiscent of Rachmaninoff. While a bit long and repetitive, the sonata is played well by the pianist.

Bonds’s adaptation of gospel-inspired Troubled Water, from her Spiritual Suite, comes across as stiff and predictable, while it should feel more improvised. Stylistically, Dett’s 8 Bible Vignettes are the most interesting and diverse works on the album. Lee’s performance is likewise much more intriguing.

Lee’s excellent and professional performance services these three African-American composers well. He takes a standard interpretive approach to non-standard repertoire. These works are stylistic hybrids, mixing genres, influences, and textures. Lee’s finely chiselled interpretation does not venture far beyond rendering the score—except for Dett’s 8 Bible Vignettes. Following Lee’s inspired rendition of Dett’s Vignettes, the pianist should dare explore improvisatory, spontaneous, and rhythmically flexible performance practices. A promising young Canadian pianist, whose interpretive and expressive range would be interesting to hear in more creative programming that pushes the envelope.