'Deep River': Legacy of black spirituals refreshed by Alchymy Viols and Michael Walker II

The repertoire formerly embraced by the term "Negro spirituals" occupies a unique place
among music to have emerged from the New World. The melodies and the passion behind the songs forged a sustaining insight that can be appreciated on both musical and spiritual levels. They have generated a wealth of arrangements.

Philip Spray, violone and director

That range is confirmed and vividly embodied in orchestrations for an early-music ensemble of harp and strings, using arrangements by several historically significant black musicians. Philip Spray directs Alchymy Viols in "Deep River: Spirituals Cross-Currents," a program compatibly presented with countertenor Michael Walker II. The Navona Records release benefits throughout from glowing performances exquisitely recorded. 

Michael Walker II in the recording studio

Walker's well-centered, floating tone is displayed immediately in the first piece, "Over My
Head," sung without accompaniment. Later there is another a cappella rendition, a moving interpretation of Jesus' silence on the cross (putting aside the "seven last words" exception), "He Never Said a Mumberlin' Word." The isolation unto death of Christianity's central figure as interpreted by slaves and ex-slaves in the United States has an amazed (and amazing)  poignancy.

It's one of several arrangements here credited to Roland Hayes, a major 20th-century figure in the artistic interpretation of this repertoire. Hayes' setting of "Roun' About de Mountain" features one of violone player Spray's orchestrations for the Alchymy Viols ensemble (viols, baroque violin and cello, harp, harpsichord). 

The weariness of the anonymous composers' perception of their lot in life, always lifted up by the sustenance of faith, shows up repeatedly. "Soon Ah Will Be Done" makes effective use of a drone accompaniment to convey the emotional burden. Here, as elsewhere on the disc, Walker's controlled vibrato adds emotional resonance to the text; it's never overdone. And some characteristics of the spirituals' refrains are represented in this spiritual by the call-and-response pattern of "no more," underlining with staccato chords the anticipated relief that heaven promises in contrast to earth's travails.

The steadiness that the faithful feel collectively is well-represented by the joyful promise of Hayes' "Plenty Good Room" and the determination of "Hold On"(Margaret Bonds' arrangement). The whirling picturesqueness of the ensemble in her arrangement of "Ezek'el Saw the Wheel" is especially effective. The legacy of the oral tradition, conveyed through biblical texts and learned by heart, is rich in vivid imagery, and those wheels spinning in the air have never been more felt brushing one's ears than they do in this performance.

The artistic kind of interpretation of this repertoire has hung in my ears for decades in the renderings of the Robert Shaw Chorale on an LP also called "Deep River." These new settings, and the fervor of a solo voice so well blended with instrumental accompaniment, manage to convey both the benefits of "high-art" treatment as well as they probe the authenticity of what these songs must have meant personally to their often anonymous creators.