Third Coast Review: "Art Song Chicago’s Second Festival Program Turns Toward a Troubled Natural World"
“In a program this varied, standout moments are hard to rank, but the afternoon ultimately hung on Fung’s Lamenting Earth. Saturday marked its Midwest premiere and only the second public performance of the complete cycle. Inspired by Claire Wahmanholm’s poem “O” and expanded with texts by students from New York’s Kaufman Music Center, the work confronts climate anxiety. The texts move between anger, hopelessness and sudden inspiration, sometimes within a single poem. The fourth song, "Vast Green," opens with the assurance that "in the end love unites all" and ends with the narrator straining to remember the last time she saw the color green. It is rough material—and a clear wake-up call.
Fung’s music meets the texts with an often abrasive directness. She gives the quartet brittle writing at high registers, unresolved dissonances that sharpen the anger in the texts and low, grumbling figures that anticipate ominous turns. The Jasper players made those contrasts without overwhelming Phan; his lucid, wide-ranging singing kept the words at the center even when the instrumental writing surged. Lamenting Earth is a bold work that deserves many more hearings.”