Recital review: Different Expressions of Devotion

Joanna Ceja (Photo – music.usc.edu).

Sunday afternoon, October 21^st, we were treated to a recital by soprano and newly-degreed USC Master of Arts recipient, Joanna Ceja, with piano accompaniment by Luis Reyes, under the raven-habitat tower at Throop Memorial Unitarian-Universalist Church.

By Frances Goff

Ms. Ceja was the perfect performer to open the Throop Performance Series, a monthly offering “to love the world from the heart of Pasadena – with the Arts”!  She is warm and engaging in person, as well as vocally, with the gravitas necessary to singing three of Richard Strauss’s Opus 10 songs, on texts of Hermann Gilm; also an appropriately light, facile touch with folklorically inspired “Canciones Argentinas” of Carlos Guastavino; bookending accessible but intense “Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia” by contemporary composer Jake Hegggie, on texts of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

In addition to being both serious and warm in the Strauss (“Zueignung”, “Nichts”, and “Allerseelen”), Ms. Ceja’s phrasing was illuminating, giving the texts lyrical beauty that only someone who really loves the music can provide.  Your reviewer used to try for high notes like that but stopped short of that gleaming sound that creates its own overtone; a sure sign of a note well-sung.

Joanna Ceja singing at Throop’s inaugural Performance Series (Photo – Tara Sindeband).

The breathless pianissimi came in the Heggie pieces.  Ms. Ceja explained that both poet and composer dug deeply beneath Shakespeare’s exposition of Ophelia, to reveal a fully developed character.  She needn’t have explained . . . the barely concealed bitterness in her rendering of “Spring” dripped coldly out, in contrast to the earlier songs she sang warmly with passion.  Her diction was perfect; no small feat when singing in English.  We all could’ve done without the noisy motorcycle taking the corner during aforementioned breathless pianissimo – and when I say breathless, I mean the audience was holding our breath.  Every inch the professionals, Ms. Ceja and Mr. Reyes did not break concentration, enabling us to ignore it also (here at Throop, we are used to such interpolations during Church services).

The “Canciones”, as Ms. Ceja explained, are rich in Argentine folklore; based on dance forms – the first that springs to mind, of course, being the Tango.  As comfortable in Spanish as she was in German and English, she took us on a story-telling journey into the streets, where the kids do a kind of “Andean Hip-Hop”, done in Guavastino’s trademark European transplant style.

Ms. Ceja and Mr. Reyes left us in a happy mood, wanting more.  I hope, as the Performance Series becomes more well-known, that they will return to us , as the poets say “in the fullness of time”.

Frances Goff has a Bachelor in Arts in Music Education from UCLA. She’s a resident of Pasadena and loves nothing better than singing in choirs and performing.