Here PATRICIA BARBER premieres a brilliant song cycle. Entitled Mythologies, both lyrics and music were written by Barber with the aid of a prestigious year-long Guggenheim grant for Composition. Each song is a character portrait drawn from the timeless stories of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and modernized, becoming commentaries on our own times. “Orpheus,” god of music, is a widower who laments his lost love in a sonnet set to music, his voice a guitar wailing over a funereal bass drum; “Hunger” a “thin-is-in” virago, served up as a postmodern reggae, whose craving to devour others turns into a feast of selfsatisfaction. “Morpheus,” god of dreams, is an intricate harmonic sculpture of long-breathed melody yearning for rest; “Pygmalion” is a sexy song about a lover whose will to possess is stronger than hers to resist. The other characters include the Moon, Oedipus, Icarus, Phaeton, the Hours, and Narcissus. Ten songs in all, Mythologies is arranged for Patricia with small jazz ensemble and runs for about 75 minutes.

The first song in the cycle, “Whiteworld “ (Oedipus), recorded on Barber’s recent Live: A Fortnight in France has already garnered critical acclaim and a popular mandate as audiences shout for the song to be performed in encores. Mythologies, an utterly original statement, the cycle promises to make a stunning intervention into the history of jazz, fusing the genre with classical new music and a range of pop and world idioms in Barber’s inimitably personal voice. This is jazz on the frontier, the music the critics are buzzing about. It is music people will be talking about for a long time to come.

 1. The Moon
 2. Morpheus
 3. Pygmalion
 4. Hunger
 5. Icarus
 6. Orpheus/Sonnet
 7. Persephone
 8. Narcissus
 9. Whiteworld/Oedipus
 10. Phaethon
 11. The Hours