For Your Grammy® Consideration: Lamenting Earth
Lamenting Earth, the latest release from GRAMMY® Award-winning tenor Nicholas Phan, in collaboration with The Jasper Quartet and his long-time performing partner pianist Myra Huang, explores humanity’s interaction with nature as expressed through composers of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Vivian Fung’s Lamenting Earth confronts that urgency directly. Anchored by Claire Wahmanholm’s poem O and expanded through the voices of high-school students responding to climate change, the cycle foregrounds youth perspectives often left unheard.
Composer: Vivian Fung
Text: Claire Wahmanholm and Kaufmann Music Center students
Performers: Nicholas Phan, Jasper String Quartet, Myra Huang
CATEGORIES ENTERED
Best Classical Vocal Album
Best Contemporary Classical Composition
Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance
PRESS
GRAMOPHONE
“As discographies of mid-career artists go, Nicholas Phan’s is impressively wide-ranging…Vivian Fung’s Lamenting Earth was premiered by Phan, Huang and the Jasper String Quartet in 2024. Placed as the final work on this album, Fung’s sometimes Britten-ish vocal writing – sung resolutely in that spirit here – does indeed appear convincingly as part of the same tradition of richly ambivalent nature-music as Vaughan Williams and Ives. Phan’s diction is crystalline and compelling amid instrumental fidgeting, nasty lurches through bow lengths and thrillingly dark‑toned passages on the piano.”
CULTURAL ATTACHÉ
“Fung’s Lamenting Earth had its world premiere with Phan in 2024. She set high school students’ climate-change poetry to music and the result is mesmerizing. The third of the four movements sets Claire Wahmanholm’s poem O. to music.This 62-minute album would make a great concert. I hope Phan, Huang and Jasper String Quartet take it on the road.”
CLASSICAL VOICE NORTH AMERICA
“Fung’s initial inspiration — and the core of the libretto — was Claire Wahmanholm’s poem “O,” using words such as “osprey,” “ocean,” and “ozone” to speak poetically about the deteriorating climate. Wahmanholm also helped shape the student contributions. The result is a text of surprising range and shocking twists: The beautiful “natural” world as first described is revealed to be an artificial replacement; we find ourselves in a harsh, barren reality that humanity could have prevented…The Jasper String Quartet and pianist Myra Huang provide an illusory lushness reminiscent of Britten in the opening movement, “November Blooming,” with musical hints of trouble on words like “ominous.” This contrasts with the insect-like, threatening scurry of “Lament,” revealing the environmental truth. “O” follows, growing slowly upward from the bottom of the performers’ registers, textured with fast string crossings and burbling piano left hand. Phan’s voice…is always expressive, committed to the poetry, and integrated with the instrumental parts. The final movement, “Vast, Green,” has a through line of quiet sorrow, admiring nature while also grieving for it.”
ALLMUSIC
“Vivian Fung's Lamenting Earth constitutes the album's centerpiece. The four-movement cycle pairs poet Claire Wahmanholm's prize-winning poem O with urgent climate-focused responses from high school students. Rather than a monolithic artistic statement, the work foregrounds youth perspectives and contemporary urgency. Wahmanholm's poem, described as a lament, an elegy, and a clarion call simultaneously, receives musical treatment emphasizing both emotional weight and testimonial power. The younger voices transform potential despair into testimony demanding serious consideration.”