Puccini: Manon Lescaut

Grammy Award-winning, "velvet voiced" (NPR) baritone Will Liverman presents a recital program honoring women in classical music, past and present, on Show Me The Way, his second "passion project" recording for Cedille. Praised as "nothing short of extraordinary" (Opera News), Liverman has curated a moving and poignant recital celebrating American female composers from 20th-century trailblazers Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Amy Cheney Beach to present-day composers commissioned for this program. This new album, Liverman's second with longtime recital partner pianist Jonathan King, is inspired by and honors the singer's mother, gospel singer Terry Liverman, and their mutual love of song. The Livermans perform together on recording for the first time in their own arrangement of Alma Bazel Androzzo's cherished hymn If I Can Help Somebody. Two new song cycles serve as pillars of the recording: Jasmine Barnes' A Sable Jubilee with a newly commissioned libretto by Tesia Kwarteng that celebrates Black Joy and Libby Larsen's three movement Machine Head: Ted Burke Poems depicting everyday American life. Liverman premiered the cycles in an "extraordinary recital... as meaningful in content as it was rich with his resonant voice-both elements impressive for their range" (Aspen Times). Liverman, "one of the most versatile singing artists performing today, " (Bachtrack) is joined by all-star special guests including J'Nai Bridges in a somber new work by Rene Orth and Renée Fleming in Sarah Kirkland Snider's mysterious and affecting Everything That Ever Was. He sings a duet from Amy Beach's rarely performed opera, Cabildo, with Nicole Cabell, featuring violinist Lady Jess and cellist Tahirah Whittington. Also featured on the album are Jonathan King's arrangement of Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb's You Show Me The Way originally performed by the duo at New York's Savoy Ballroom, as well as a new work, Spell to Turn the World Around, by Kamala Sankaram, with a text that calls awareness to the destruction caused by wildfires. This recording follows Liverman's "devastatingly beautiful" (The Washington Post), Billboard chart-topping and Grammy-nominated Cedille album, Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers.