Maria Nockin’s list of her four 2016 favorites begins with Mark Abel’s Home Is a Harbor:
“Mark Abel’s opera Home Is a Harbor is a musical work looking for a stage. I loved listening to it and I’m in hopes of seeing it performed sometime in the future. It tells of two very different sisters who eventually realize that they both love living among the beauties of the California seashore. In the tradition of composers like Benjamin Britten, Abel’s most enchanting music describes the mysteries of the sea, its mists and its moods. The libretto is replete with current speech and shows the use of current technology such as texting at the dinner table, but it also incorporates short melodic numbers in arioso style and beautifully harmonized duets. The second work on the disk is Abel’s song cycle The Palm Trees Are Restless. It echoes the melodic beauty of Impressionism as Abel weaves a colorful tapestry around poetic descriptions of the sadder side of life on the West Coast.” —Maria Nockin, Fanfare Magazine
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