Gregory Spears is an American composer of instrumental and operatic works that blend aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music.[1] Among his best known works are the operas Fellow Travelers and Paul's Case, as well as his Requiem.[2]
His opera Fellow Travelers, adapted from the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon with a libretto by Greg Pierce, premiered at Cincinnati Opera on June 17, 2016[5] and has since then been produced across the United States and has garnered many positive reviews. Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times wrote: "Originality in the arts is a vague and overhyped virtue. Few works are completely original. All creative artists borrow from others, both masters they revere and contemporaries they may be in competition with. Still, originality just comes through sometimes, as the composer Gregory Spears demonstrates in his personal, boldly quirky score for the wrenching, and sadly timely, opera Fellow Travelers."[6] And John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune: "Spears is unusually sensitive to the irregular cadences of American speech, and his setting of words to music is masterly... "Fellow Travelers" is one of the most accomplished new American operas I have encountered in recent years."[7] Since its world premiere, it has received over 13 productions[8] by companies such as Lyric Opera of Chicago,[9]Prototype Festival,[6]Minnesota Opera,[10][11]Florida Grand Opera,[12]Boston Lyric Opera,[13]Des Moines Metro Opera,[14]Virginia Opera,[15]Arizona Opera,[16] and more.
His latest opera Castor and Patience was commissioned for Cincinnati Opera's 100th anniversary season with an original libretto by Tracy K. Smith.[17] The world premiere was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to July 2022. The opera received a Critic's Pick[18] from The New York Times and was also named in The New York Times Best Classical Music Performances of 2022.[19]Zachary Woolfe in his review for The New York Times describes the work: "The agonies and pleasures of Castor and Patience,... are like those of a less densely orchestrated Puccini. As in Tosca, La bohème or Madama Butterfly, unabashedly, even shamelessly effusive vocal lines draw us poignantly close to characters in a rending situation: here, a Black family riven by disagreement over whether to sell part of a precious plot of land."[18]
Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith's upcoming opera The Righteous is commissioned by Santa Fe Opera and will make its world premiere there in summer 2024.[20]
Spears' music often draws on earlier musical styles processed through contemporary minimalist techniques.[22]
The New York Times's Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim described his opera Fellow Travelers: "But what makes Fellow Travelers such a satisfying operatic experience is the old-fashioned combination of a swift-flowing and deft libretto and gorgeous music."[23]Alex Ross in The New Yorker elaborates: "The harmony is largely tonal, but it is anti-Romantic in effect, tending instead toward a decorous neo-Baroque sensibility. Voices and instruments often perform courtly pirouettes against sustained chords and even pulses. The atmosphere is one of hushed disclosure: the music implies more than it says. What emerges is a potently ambiguous sound world that conveys human warmth and chill in equal measure. Above all, it is a transparent medium in which singing actors can speak instead of shout."[24]
Heidi Waleson described Spears' compositional style in her Wall Street Journal review of the opera O Columbia: "Mr. Spears writes brilliantly for vocal ensembles. Starting with neoclassical-style clarity, he builds textured, complex musical structures that sound old and new at the same time, and his skillful text settings use minimalist-like repetition to give Mr. Vavrek's pointed, thoughtful words even more power and emotional specificity."[25]
Steve Smith, in his New York Times review of the opera Paul's Case, based on the Willa Cather short story of the same title, described the score: "Mr. Spears's elegantly spare music, with its gamelan-redolent modes and clockwork repetitions, Baroque vocal fillips, intricately woven ensembles and dramatically placed dissonances, further infuses the tale with a sense of ritual and inevitability."[26]
David Patrick Stearns, in his Philadelphia Inquirer review of Spears' Requiem, described his musical influences: "Spears intersperses the swan myth with the requiem text, much of it reflecting lyrical Baltic influences of Arvo Pärt, but with a young composer's restlessness. The swan's song is speculatively re-created with otherworldly vocal ornaments. The piece also contains counterpoint that echoes 16th-century madrigals as well as a modern sense of theatrical timing that keeps your ears on edge until the last note."[27]
Selected works
Opera
The Righteous, world premiere at Santa Fe Opera, libretto by Tracy K. Smith, 2024[28]
Concerto for Two Trumpets and Strings, written for trumpeter Brandon Ridenour and commissioned by the BMI Foundation/Carlos Surinach Fund and Concert Artist Guild, 2019[37][38]
A New Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei for the Mozart Requiem, commissioned by Seraphic Fire and the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, 2013[39]
^ abStearns, David Patrick (November 13, 2011). "New Recordings". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on December 6, 2015. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
^Stearns, David Patrick (January 21, 2013). "Beasts of a musical wild". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
