Recordings

Tenor Omar Najmi and pianist Brendon Shapiro celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary with the release of Transformations, a new song album that explores themes of change, impermanence, and transition.

Transformations is now up on all major streaming platforms

and available for purchase

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All proceeds from album sales support the mission of Catalyst New Music

Note from the artists:

Change. Impermanence. Transition. These are all key elements of the mortal experience, and they are elements that can evoke anxiety and sorrow. We wanted to examine the other side - the beauty and meaning that is gained by releasing our clutch on fixed states and embracing transformation and flux.

The music and poetry featured in this album is not about being, but rather, about the constant process of becoming. Finzi/Hardy’s A Young Man’s Exhortation examines the cyclical transformation from life to death to new life. Chausson/Bouchor’s Quatre Mélodies explores change within the heart, as love becomes memory. Mignon, of Schumann/Goethe’s Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister, dreams of the transfiguration of the body as we move to the heavenly plane after death and are freed from the confines of physicality and gender. Najmi/Dekine’s More Than Our Own Caves rejoices in the transition from grief towards healing.

We recognize that we are releasing these songs into the world at a time that is full of worrying transition - a changing climate, geopolitical shifts, rapidly advancing technology - and while music alone cannot solve these crises, we hope that it can bring some optimism to our listeners: the world has always changed, and we are temporary passengers playing audience to that change.

Track List:

A Young Man’s Exhortation, Op. 14

music by Gerald Finzi, poetry by Thomas Hardy

A Young Man’s Exhortation

Ditty

Transformations

The Dance Continued

Quatre mélodies, Op. 8

music by Ernest Chausson, poetry by Maurice Bouchor

Nocturne

Amour d’antan

Printemps triste

Nos souvenirs

Lieder und Gesänge aus “Wilhelm Meister”, Op. 98a

music by Robert Schumann, poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Kennst du das Land

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

Heiss’ mich nicht reden

So lasst mich scheinen

More Than Our Own Caves
music by Omar Najmi, poetry by Marlanda Dekine

commissioned by soprano Kelley Hollis for her world premiere performance with Juventas New Music Ensemble

II.

III.

IV.

Stranger in Paradise, from Kismet

music & lyrics by Robert Wright & George Forrest, adapted from music by Alexander Borodin

Stranger in Paradise

Text & Translations:

A Young Man’s Exhortation

Call off your eyes from care
By some determined deftness; put forth joys
Dear as excess without the core that cloys
And charm Life's lourings fair

Exalt and crown the hour
That girdles us, and fill it full with glee
Blind glee, excelling aught could ever be
Were heedfulness in power

Send up such touching strains
That limitless recruits from Fancy's pack
Shall rush upon your tongue, and tender back
All that your soul contains

For what do we know best?
That a fresh love-leaf crumpled soon will dry
And that men moment after moment die
Of all scope dispossest

If I have seen one thing
It is the passing preciousness of dreams
That aspects are within us; and who seems
Most kingly is the King

Ditty

Beneath a knap where flown
Nestlings play
Within walls of weathered stone
Far away
From the files of formal houses
By the bough the firstling browses
Lives a Sweet no merchants meet
No man barters no man sells
Where she dwells

Upon that fabric fair
'Here is she!'
Seems written everywhere
Unto me
But to friends and nodding neighbours
Fellow wights in lot and labours
Who descry the times as I
No such lucid legend tells
Where she dwells

Should I lapse to what I was
Ere we met;
(Such will not be but because
Some forget
Let me feign it) – none would notice
That where she I know by rote is
Spread a strange and withering change
Like a drying of the wells
Where she dwells

To feel I might have kissed –
Loved as true –
Otherwhere nor Mine have missed
My life through
Had I never wandered near her
Is a smart severe – severer
In the thought that she is nought
Even as I beyond the dells
Where she dwells

And Devotion droops her glance
To recall
What bond-servants of Chance
We are all
I but found her in that going
On my errant path unknowing
I did not out-skirt the spot
That no spot on earth excels –
Where she dwells!

Transformations

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!

The Dance Continued

Regret not me;
Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

Swift as the light
I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

I did not know
That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

I skipped at morn
Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

I ran at eves

Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, 'I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves'.

Now soon will come
The apple, pear, and plum,
And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.

Again you will fare
To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

Yet gaily sing
Until the pewter ring
Those songs we sang when we went gipsying.

And lightly dance
Some triple-timed romance
In coupled figures, and forget mischance;

And mourn not me
Beneath the yellowing tree;
For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully.

Nocturne

The night was pensive and overcast
Scarcely a few pins of gold shone in the ebony
Of her flowing hair
Which, on us, on the far sea and on the earth
Shrouded in a sleep full of mystery
Spread wafting perfumes

And our young love, born of our thoughts
Awakens on a bed of one hundred icy roses
Which breathed no more than a day
And I, I told her pale and trembling with fever
That we shall both die, a smile on our lips
At the same time our love dies.

Amour d’antan

My love of yester-year, do you remember?
Our hearts flowered like two roses
In the spring like breeze from kisses so sweet.
Do you remember these things gone-by?

Do you still see in your golden dreams
The blue horizons, the sun-filled sea
Which slowly falls asleep kissing your feet?
In your golden dreams – are you perhaps forgetful?

In the pale rays of April gone-by
Do you feel the flower of your dreams
Open a bouquet of fragrant and new-born thoughts?
Beautiful bygone Aprils there on the sands.

Printemps triste

Our beloved paths will soon bloom again
And my broken heart cannot be reborn
Thus every evening sees me hasten
And weep a long time beneath your window

Your empty window where, no longer shines
Your lovely head and gentle smile
And as I think of our days that are gone
I mourn and know not what to say

And always the flowers and always the sky
And the soul of the woods in their dense shade
Murmuring in chorus an eternal song
Which floats in the air drunk with rapture!

And the sea which rolls under the rising sun
Carrying far away all my thoughts
If they would only fly on the wings of the wind
To you, these wounded doves!

Nos souvenirs

Our memories, all these things
Which we scatter into the winds
Like petals of roses
Or wings of butterflies

Have a joy that vanished
Kept every secret fragrance
And it is astonishing
How the past reappears

At certain moments it seems
That the dreams last forever
And that we are still together
As in the days of love that is past

While we are half asleep

Rocked by the faint song
Of a voice that charms our ears
There hovers a name on our lips

And this hour when we remember
How extravagantly we gave of our hearts
Is like a fluttering of wings
That return from the happy past.

Kennst du das Land

Do you know the land where the lemons blossom
Among dark leaves the oranges grow
A gentle wind from the blue Heavens blows
The myrtle stands silent and tall the laurel stands?
Do you know it well?
It is there! it is there
Wish I with you oh my love to go

Do you know the house? On columns rests its roof
It's hall shines its chamber shimmers
And marble statues stand and stare at me
What has one to you you poor child done?
Do you know it well?
It is there! it is there
Wish I with you oh my protector to go

Do you know the mountain and its web of clouds?
The mule seeks in the mist its path
In caves lives the dragons' ancient brood;
The rock falls and over it the torrent
Do you know it well?
It is there! it is there
Goes our path! O father let us go!

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt

Only those who know longing
Know what I suffer!
Alone and cut off
From every joy
I look to the sky
In that direction

Ah! The one who loves and knows me
Is in the distance
I become dizzy
My insides burn
Only those who know longing
Know what I suffer!

Heiss’ mich nicht reden

Do not call on me to speak, bid me be silent,
For my secret is to me a duty;
I long to you my whole inner self to show,
Only fate does not want it.

At the right time drives away the course of the sun
The dark night, and she must become bright;
The hard rock unlocks its bosom,
Does not begrudge the earth its deep-hidden springs.

Everyone seeks in the arms of a friend peace;
There can the breast in sorrows pour out;
Only an oath presses my lips,
And only a god can open them up.

So lasst mich scheinen

Thus let me seem till thus I become
Do not pull off my white dress!
I hurry from the fair earth
Down to that dark house

There rest I for a little silence
Then opens itself the new sight
I leave then this pure covering
This girdle and this wreath/garland

And those heavenly shapes
Do not ask who is man or woman
And no garments, no folds
Surround the transfigured body

Though I lived without worry and effort
Yet felt I deep pain enough
From sorrow grew I old too early
Make me forever again young

More Than Our Own Caves

We’ve shared freckles with centuries-old wounds,

our souls shrouded in the darkest blue, sitting

in front of a mirror saying until chanting: I want you.

I want you. I want you to live surrounded by roots

belonging to somebody’s mother, roots that belong

to you. Generational wounds cascade over wombs

like clouds lightly misting over. We’re not crazy.

We were in crisis before the virus, microcosms of fear

disguised by hope. Where are we headed?, the Earth asks

since we think we know the way. I can't look away

from the fires this time. I'm back now and can't look away.

In the dream, my grandmother carved my name into a tree,

muscadine vines surrounded me, and I welcomed myself into

a meandering mirror. We know our world is groaning.

Who took out its chords? Who is singing our song now?

I think it's you. I hope it's you. Oh, how I pray for your father

stuck seeing only his own face, how we've been destroying

each other, meeting in hospital doorways. I'm trying to be perfect

so I don't die, too, or if I die should I do it perfectly?

I need to know it’s okay to see a god in my neighbor’s face.

Give me my friends to help me. I won’t judge as they appear.

I need to know it’s okay to need more than my own cave.

Lift me out of boxes. Free me from collective fears.

I want to return to our great-grandmothers’ gardens,

and count the many shades of greens. Your couch is not

my home. Reach out to me. I’m waiting in the midst

of wildfires and floods. Reach across and feel me.

We’re more than our own caves. The DSM is a guess.

It does not know our names. The couches and hospitals

are not our true home. We are each other's true homes.

Stranger in Paradise

Oh why do the leaves of the mulberry tree whisper differently now?
And why is the nightingale singing at noon on the mulberry bough?
For some most mysterious reason, this isn't the garden I know
No, it's Paradise now, that was only a garden a moment ago

Take my hand
I'm a stranger in Paradise
All lost in a wonderland
A stranger in Paradise
If I stand starry eyed
That's a danger in Paradise
For mortals who stand beside

An angel like you

I saw your face and I ascended
Out of the common place into the rare
Somewhere in space I hang suspended
Until I know there's a chance that you care

Won't you answer this fervent prayer
Of a stranger in Paradise?
Don't send me in dark despair
From all that I hunger for
But open your angel's arms
To the stranger in Paradise
And tell him that he need be
A stranger no more

Credits:

Engineered and Mastered by:

Luke Damrosch, Efferent Productions

www.efferentproductions.com

Recorded at:

Shalin Liu Performance Center

37 Main St, Rockport, MA 01966

www.rockportmusic.org

Cover Art: Molly McCahan

www.mollymccahan.com

Extra Pair of Ears: Laura Intravia

www.lauraintravia.com