For those not in the know, Songs for Stephen represents a nearly three-decade collaboration between esteemed composer Elena Ruehr and celebrated baritone Stephen Salters.

Elena describes the time “a handsome and charismatic young man approached me after a premiere of one of my compositions at Boston University. He asked me to write him a song cycle for his debut recital with the Bank of Boston’s Celebrity Series. I told him to send me a recording of his singing and I’d think about it. The first note I heard Stephen sing sent a bolt of energy down my spine: this was the singer I had always wanted to write for!”

Stephen reciprocates, “What a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration has landed in my life both professionally and personally with Elena. From my first personal musical envelopment of her first song ever written for me, I truly fell in love with her creations for me, and thus we began this truly special and unique journey.”.

Elena evocatively sets some of America’s most notable poets, including Cuban-American and National Humanities Medal recipient Richard Blanco who read his own work at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, himself a subject of Five Men in Guggenheim Fellow Elizabeth Alexander’s encapsulation of two centuries’ worth of multiple African-Americans experiences.

Leading light of the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes and feminist-activist Adrienne Rich lend their lyrics to poetry for children, both dark and light. The addition of the four-minute bonbon Lied, set to texts by Rainer Maria Rilke, is a reference to Elena’s Germanic ancestry as well as the first song, by Schubert, that Elena heard Stephen sing.

ELENA RUEHR (b. 1963)
Songs for Stephen

Five Men
Elizabeth Alexander
1 I. Blue Prelude (3.44)
2. II. Waiting for Cinque (3.06)
3. III. Nat Turner Dreams of Insurrection (4.30)
4. IV. Carver’s Song (2.35)
5. V. The Elders (2.48)

6. Lied (4.11)
Rainer Maria Rilke: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge sung in German

Travel Songs
Richard Blanco: Directions to the Beach of the Dead
7. I. Somewhere to Paris (4.10)
8. II. A Poet in Venicen (7.16)
9. III. Torsos at the Louvre (4.59)

10. Wonderful Bears (5.08)
Adrienne Rich: Bears

Stephen Salters, baritone
Donald Berman, piano

Recorded September 2000, October 2022, and July 2023, at Futura Productions, Roslindale, Massachusetts, USA, we are first gifted Alexander’s Five Men, which opens on the ornately affluent Blue Prelude and the more stridently fixated Waiting for Cinque, before the veritably shimmering Nat Turner Dreams of Insurrection, the perky, flirtatiously fun Carver’s Song and the resonant The Elders are brought forth.

A resilient demeanor within Rilke’s Lied (from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge sung in German) is along next and is itself backed by the trio within Blanco’s Travel Songs (from Directions to the Beach of the Dead), which opens on the rhythmic Somewhere to Paris, then comes the empowered A Poet in Venicen, closing on the sumptuous Torsos at the Louvre; then we get Rich’s astute Bears (from Wonderful Bears).

Lullabies & Spring Songs
Langston Hughes
11. I. Signs of Spring (1.11)
12. II. April Rain (3.01)
13. III. City (2.06)
14. IV. Sandman 3.45)
15. V. Year Round (1.10)
16. VI. Autumn Thought (1.40)
17. VII. Stars (4.03)

Stephen Salters, baritone
David Zobel, piano

Recorded August 1999, at Futura Productions, Roslindale, Massachusetts, USA, we next get a septet of tracks that make up Hughes’s Lullabies & Spring Songs, and which opens on the scintillating Signs of Spring and the pure gossamer of April Rain and then we get the crystalline City, the playfully bold Sandman and the resplendent Year Round, the set rounding out on the cultured Autumn Thought, coming to a close on a simply breathtaking Stars.

As with all of their collaborations over the years, Songs for Stephen brings Elena’s evocative music to effervescent life by the baritone’s sumptuous voice.

Official Purchase Page

www.elenaruehr.org