The Sun Is Love CD

Music by Gwyneth Walker
Michelle Areyzaga, Soprano
Jamie Shaak, Pianist

NATS Journal of Singing
Gregory Berg
Listener’s Gallery Review

“Soprano Michelle Areyzaga and pianist Jamie Shaak deliver performances of stunning beauty, clarity, and eloquence. Ms. Areyzaga’s voice has a luminous radiance from top to bottom, and she deploys that sound with elegant ease in even the most taxing of these songs. Beyond the exquisite sound she produces, the soprano also has a limitless palette of emotional and expressive colors and inflections from which she draws. One seldom encounters singing that is this richly communicative yet so unfailingly lovely. Ms. Shaak is confronted with one formidable challenge after another in these extravagantly scored accompaniments, but she dispatches them with astonishing effortlessness. What is especially impressive is how she plays with such unbridled passion, yet remains a most sensitive and responsive partner. The disk also features her in two of Ms. Walker’s piano solos, “Semplice” and “Rhythms of the North Country.” The latter is an arresting soundscape of the natural world in which the piano is played in both conventional and unconventional ways. It’s a fascinating piece and one hopes that the composer will find the time to craft many more piano solos.”