The San Diego Troubadour with a nice review of Mark Abel’s recent Delos release The Dream Gallery:

“Mark Abel is a Carlsbad composer who describes his approach to The Dream Gallery: Seven California Portraits as “postmodernist art song.” It’s dense, avant garde material that requires the listener’s full attention for 70 minutes. He’s mixing classical orchestrations, progressive rock chops, classically trained singers, and plenty of musical theatre exposition-song touches, all delivering smartly written, irony-laced essays about social issues…

“The pieces are named after the first-person character singing, who each represent a California city or county. The first one is Helen, from L.A., and to some very interesting and dynamic orchestral backing, she relates her transformation from naive young girl through phases as blissed newlywed, betrayed wife, to embittered divorcée. This is the most effective of Abel’s set pieces here; Jaeb has a knockout voice and gaps in the narrative allow the orchestration to make its own statement with a quiet flute passage, a cello-fueled buildup, and mood changes that match up well with the story. … Lonnie’s story, (set in) Richmond … is about the disillusionment of migration from rural South to Bay Area shipping yards: “We got the Depression all over again.” Lonnie is the old-timer who stayed the course through the riots and corruption, married for 50 years and raised two good kids. Abel’s musical fabric fades into a canvas for a compelling story that mirrors the inner city experience, as Cossey becomes Lonnie. San Diego is represented by a humorous, cynical song about social climbing and mindless materialism.

Abel isn’t far off in calling The Dream Gallery postmodernist art songs. They are closest to performance art, in 10-minute snippets. Some grab attention, some don’t, but it is clever and different.” — Frank Kocher, San Diego Troubadour

Read the full review on www.SanDiegoTroubadour.com!