Poet Jeffery Beam
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From reviews of Jeffery Beam and Lee Hoiby's Life of the Bee and Shauna Holiman's CD New Growth (The Carnegie Weill Recital Hall performance recording):

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Beam's poems characterize various activities and residents of a beehive. "Millennium Approaches" begins the cycle with a brief elegy to the spent blossoms the bees have used to keep themselves and their world going. "The Spirit of the Hive" speaks to the inevitable call of wildflowers to the bee. "The Sting" depicts the fierce protection that the worker bees provide the hive from intruders. "Ars Poetica: The Queen" describes an ancient queen bee surveying her kingdom. "The Swarm" evokes the exultant power of a bee swarm as it bursts out into blossoms. Beam uses short, precise phrases mixing natural images with literary language to form his arresting verse. Lines describing the hive ("...this, then, is my cathedral. Built of wax and lives.") and the swarm ("...the miraculous droning, sibilant dances directing and thumping....") give an idea of the poet's style. Hoiby's music gives each song a specific atmosphere and mood. His assured style and finished forms show an experienced understanding of how music can enhance a text without overwhelming it or distorting it. He has sparingly but tellingly employed the natural buzziness of the cello strings to suggest bee flight and fight without becoming cute or obvious. He finds a menacing darkness for the worker bees, a mystical wonder for the queen and an exuberant power for the swarm. Holiman possesses a focused voice, not overly powerful but full of character, which uses fully for various effects. She is an unabashed actress, blustery as the worker bee, radiant as the queen and awe-struck describing the swarm. McMunn had admirable precision and fleetness of fingers in the dense piano lines, while cellist Law added a rich warmth to the mix. The performers easily held the audience's attention throughout with their committed, intelligent portrayals. Congratulations to Beam, Hoiby and the performers for a beautiful, evocative work.
—Roy Dicks in Classical Voice North Carolina: An Online Classical Music Journal for Central North Carolina (April 12, 2002)

The Life of the Bee by Lee Hoiby with lyrics by Jeffery Beam, was a nice surprise. In its New York Premiere, Beam read his text with the most passion and characterization conceivable and he was funny. As one listened carefully to the following music, however, it was clear that either he overacted a bit or that Hoiby's music was a little too serious. For example, in Millennium Approaches, Beam read, "...the world is painfully beautiful, painfully sad" with a melodramatic tone bordering on parody. But the music here sounded genuinely somber. In The Spirit of the Hive, things gelled better between the reading and the music, with Beam's eerie whispering and ominous chromatic trills in the piano part. In The Sting, Holiman gave a lending hand to the overall continuity of the performance with menacing whispering of her own and good 'bad-guy' acting in her portrayal of the queen bee. The imaginative, albeit familiar sounding scouring continued to the final song The Swarm with low grumbling and swooping chromatic scales in the piano and tremolo passages in the cello (roll over, Rimsky-Korsakoff.) Pianist Brent McMunn played the virtuosic piano part with brilliance and precision and Barbara Stein Mallow on cello, while sounding a bit thin, tackled all the notes with complete ease.

In all, this was a delightful evening with a presentation that was embracing.
—Anthony Aibel's review of "Shauna Holiman and Friends" Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie, April 18, 2002 (Including Lee Hoiby / Jeffery Beam's "Life of the Bee") New York Concert Review (Summer / Fall 2002)

In early October, I visited New York City for the first time since September 11th. My first jaunt into the city streets lead me to St. Patrick's cathedral in mid-town. The old world religious structure compelled me to enter, and I entered almost in a trance. Heavenly ceilings, open, reverberating space, the flicker of candles in the dark: a sanctuary. How could I not feel a sense of awe? As I moved toward the pews, the massive air of the pipe organ began to swell and fill the church with inspired song: "Hallelujah, Hallelujah" the choir chanted. My soul floated, transcending the grief that had found a place to hide.

I emerged back into the crowed streets and reverted back to my old self, no longer transported by the sanctuary of the holy. As I ambled down 47th street, I pondered the last time I had temporarily visited with that divine feeling. Was it in April? Indeed. The experience, though, was not in a church or in nature, but at a poetry reading. Stranger miracles have happened!

Let's not be untruthful about poetry readings. Experience tells us that most of them are dreadfully boring- hardly distinguished from droning church services. But every so often, there's one that's more than a reading; it's a true performance—emotion put into communicable form. Jeffery Beam's performance of "The Life of the Bee," along with the talented musicians, who interpreted his words into music, was one of those rare poetry events. Over the past six years, I've read and listened to Jeffery Beam's poetry. Why I continue to revisit Mr. Beam and his art is to regain a sense of the sacred, to again experience the sacred song, to know that beauty can still revive and bring the dead spirit back to life.

These tantalizing aspects of Beam's poetry presented themselves in full splendor at the North Carolina Literary Festival, held at UNC, Chapel Hill this April 2002. Beam's reading and the musical performance of "The Life of the Bee" captured my attention from the moment I entered Person Recital Hall. The small chapel with streams of light filtering through stained-glass windows served as the perfect setting for "The Life of the Bee," a cycle of poems written from the perspectives of the bees themselves. Because "Life of the Bee" is mainly dramatic monologues, it forces us to move out of our human-centered perspective to consider for a while the life of the drone, the life of the queen bee. In this way, the Beam's poem-cycle imitates the function of hymns and chants composed by religious orders. Hymns and chants, among other things, intend to move the listener from the human-centered perspective to the spiritual realm where the divine creator exists. The difference, though, is that for Beam, the sacred- the divine-is found not by looking out of this world but by peering intently into it. God hides in the fineness of nature, even in flying, stinging insects. Fitting, indeed, for Beam to perform "The Life of the Bee" in a chapel-like venue. The sacredness of the space complimented the sacredness of the poems.

No other poetry reading at the festival could quite rival Beam's. Who else could combine fine poetry with the fine art of music? Piano, cello, soprano. Wendy Law voiced through her cello both the pleasure and pain associated with Beam's poetry, and the breath-taking voice of Shauna Holiman astounded. Lee Hoiby, the composer who put Beam's poetry to music, should be commended for such an affecting interpretation of "The Life of the Bee." When the performance ended, my friend and editor of Nantahala, Rob Merritt, remarked that Ezra Pound would have approved of "Life of the Bee": The performance was a triumph over the mediocrity that popular culture ceaselessly dishes out. Jeffery Beam's high art served as a tonic for the plague of the mean! I've known religious experiences; I count "The Life of the Bee" one of them.
—Mark Robert's "High Art in Chapel Hill" in Nantahala Review (v.2 no. 1, Spring 2003)

An unusual program was offered on Saturday evening by the mezzo-soprano Rosina Maria Zoppi , the cellist Ursula Bauman-Huber, who is well known in the area, and the Spanish pianist Amri-Alhambra. The musicians presented works of three contemporary American composers, Lee Hoiby, Jake Heggie, and André Previn. The voice and instruments filled the forceful musical presentation with enthusiasm. Born in Zürich and trained in Texas and London, as well as in Basel, Rosina Maria Zoppi was convincing as a virtuoso soloist. With good diction, both richly faceted vocally and expressive in form, she gave the songs, sung in English, a colorful musical palette. Not displaying less masterly expressiveness, Ursula Baumann-Huber made her cello resound. She was born in Brazil where she began her study of cello. She continued her study at the conservatory in Zürich and afterwards has lived in Switzerland since 1982. Along with her concert work, she teaches in the Fachhochschule Argau, the canton schools in Zofingen, and Wettingen. She is a brilliant interpreter of cello music—mellow, warm and expressive, and exciting—as one experienced in the Praxiskeller. Ameri-Anton, a native of Spain, grew up in Switzerland, completed his study with a concert diploma, and is active with chamber groups and as an accompanist and soloist. He teaches at the Musikschule Mauer. He also gave an interesting, subtle performance.

The musical trio appeared first together in Zürich and Baden with the same program as in Rothrist. Chosen for the evening concert "Before the Storm" were lyrical texts by American and English authors, which were set to music by contemporary American composers.

The first five lieder were poems set to music by Lee Hoiby from the text of Jeffery Beam, a botanical librarian at the University of North Carolina. Mr. Hoiby was born in 1926 in Wisconsin and composes operas and lieder. A haunting lament from "Millennium kommt näher" (translation "The Millennium Approaches"); lively, enticing, with a lovely cello and piano part "The Spirit of the Hive" giving an exquisite sound picture of the delicate sensitivity of nature; next, "The Sting" mournful with the striking vibrations of the cello and the strong intensifying effect building to "Asking Nothing"; lovely melodious "The Queen" with the finely drawn musical expression of the royal space of the beehive.

Directly apprehended was the buzz, the dance, and the swarming of "The Swarm," even to the drone of the hive carried by the cello. The stillness in the pear tree is emphasized musically by the stressed pause in the song line in "Silences."

An evening of lieder with unusual literary text was impressive and received hearty applause.
— Brigitte Hächle's review "Forceful Musical Presentation of American Composers Rothrist Evening of Lieder 'Before The Storm' in The Praxiskeller", Zofinger Tagblatt (19 September 2002)

I listened to the CD all the way through several times, then in parts yesterday. What I like best of all, in fact 'adore', is the whole thing. The way it all works together, the 'vision' as it were. The balance of poems and composers; of spoken and sung; and the unity of Shauna Holiman's voice—and the interesting sparkle at the end when another voice appears, the mirrored soprano, Amelia Watkins. The setting of Jeffery Beam's "Ars Poetica" is certainly a favorite. And surprisingly the Sarah Teasdale poems which held little promise for me when I read them on the page, but were very moving aloud in their recitations (spoken & sung). So much of romantic love is waiting. Or that's its offshoot. The root is separation. Can romance exist without it? Very effective. Heartening all around to have this chamber music, chamber poetry realized so effectively, especially when poetry with a capital "P" seems to have hip-hopped itself miles from these sorts of intimicacies.
—Poet and editor Thomas Meyer (The Jargon Society) (Email to Jeffery Beam and later elaborated on the Barnes & Noble.com (December 2002)

I've just listened for the first time to New Growth. It's stunning. Sara Teasdale's work has never been so well presented, and I loved the Katha Pollitt, especially the piece about the plum tree. Then, oh then-"The Life of the Bee". Your queen-voice is properly that of a grande dame. The music is exactly right—the buzzing, the swarming, Shauna Holiman's lingering over "drooly jew-els." Listening to you, I felt as if you were close at hand. Merry Christmas to me!
—Natural history writer, poet, and classicist Janet Lembke (Email to author December 11, 2002)

I listen to 'New Growth' and am struck (and ashamed) by all the things I did not 'hear' when I read them: all those delicious assonances and half-rhymes...and including the sly 'This is a thing...men will not do.' But also the lovely run-on line with the 'fox/glove' that brings out the feral in the name. Of course the pleasure of 'drooly jewels', though I'm not sure the setting is not over the top as is not the case in the wonderful (Whitmanish) echoes of gospel music in "Ars Poetica" or the secret present of sibilant in the sibyls. And I love the way the music flows across the tercets like a brook. I'm not sure that I would have recognized your voice: not at all as you (usually) sound to me, but the more haunting for that I suppose. Your whole consort dancing together strikes me as neither pleasantly decorative (the Teasdale) nor over-the-top (as in the siren voices of "Cistern Water'") an emotion not entirely earned, as Mr. Eliot would say!
— Canadian literary critic, English scholar, world renown gardener, botanical and horticultural historian (University of Toronto) Douglas Chambers (Email to author, December 4, 2002)

New Growth accentuates the power of poetry, and indeed, makes for vital new growth on the vine of the art song. No singer interprets contemporary poetry better than Holiman. Having heard some of these works performed live, I can tell you she is a compact dynamo, filling the recital hall with energy, reflecting the emotion and tone of poetry with every note and gesture. Even in recording her understanding of the lyrics is communicated powerfully. The recording begins with six songs based on the poems of Sara Teasdale, an early twentieth century poet. These intense and introspective lyrics create a somber, dream-like mood emphasized by the Holiman's rich voice. [Lee] Hoiby, one of America's most versatile and productive composers, is at his best in creating the musical setting for Life of the Bee. Because Beam's lyrics present a dramatic characterization, the composer has an emotional setting to depict, and Hoiby makes the most of the opportunity. Holiman's ability to portray emotions while handling delicate irony, and the virtuosity of Brent McMunn on piano and cellist Barbara Stein Mallow, are put to the test by Hoiby's score, with its vivid texture and complex harmonies. Nevertheless, because the music is so clearly evocative of moods anyone can understand, the piece is attractive to audiences who might not always respond to contemporary song.

Water Dreams, with its haunting central image of a cistern full of faces, is a cycle of three poems written by Holiman and set to music by Melissa Shiflett, who is also the composer for the Sara Teasdale poems mentioned above. In Metaphors of Women, Elliot Z. Levine has written a series of astonishing soprano duets for the poems of Katha Pollitt, the noted essayist. The success of these duets - I had expected to find them an exercise in patient listening, but they hit me like a hurricane - makes it even clearer that accomplished contemporary composers have a wide variety of tools at their disposal for giving life to the written word.
—Editor and Librarian, Cy Dillon (In Oyster Boy Review)

New Growth is a CD of collaborative celebration that illuminates and creates connections through song, expanding the meaning of word and image with music. The multitalented musicians and poets featured on the CD are impressive in their individual accomplishments. Together, they are elegant.

The CD showcases the four song cycles performed at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. The CD is compelling, and new understanding sparks when fresh composition is struck. The curve of melodic line bends a poetic line, heightens a word. Rhythms coalesce, surprise. A familiar thought, nuance, or pulse is heard anew, experienced afresh in song.

When Holiman brought composer Lee Hoiby poems from Jeffery Beam's bee cycle, Hoiby was struck by five that "seemed to invite music." Hoiby notes, "The words are so alive, so rhythmic, evoke such surprising mystery, endowing the humble honeybee with such, well, personality-they seemed to sing themselves." True, but Hoiby, who has written over seventy songs, nine operas, two piano concertos, two oratorios, three ballets, three orchestral suites and many works for solo instruments and chamber ensembles, brings additional vibrancy to the cycle. His piano, cello and soprano setting for The Life of the Bee opens in the first poem with the entwining voices of Shauna Holiman and the cello, played by Barbara Stein Mallow. In the following four poems, the cello joins the piano, both often suggesting the insistent, rhythmic buzzing of bees.

In commenting on the genesis of the bee poems, Jeffery Beam tells of a bee hive inhabiting the kitchen ceiling of a former basement apartment where he lived: "On the day a beekeeper was to come to carry away the colony, it swarmed. What a sight as the bees came through the cinder block walls of the apartment and out into the air!" This experience, plus reading Maeterlinck's books on natural history, inspired a series of bee poems, now becoming a book. In the notes to his own Green Finch Press multimedia CD, What We Have Lost: New & Selected Poems 1977-2001, Beam seems to align with Teasdale's sensitivities when he says, "I conjure...to find a black hole where energy and feeling and metaphor collapse into an essence, a distillation." He notes that most frequently his attention is drawn to "the natural world- where somehow reside human feelings and thoughts that we try to control and manipulate, but which always, at the bottom, come from some primal source which protects and enlarges us, if we would only let it."

One thinks also of the distilled images in Holiman's and Pollitt's poems. Beam notes that his collaboration with other musicians on the song cycle has enriched his own relationship to the poems.

One marvels how, short of the talents mustered within a full scale opera company, such a gathering of accomplished writers and musicians find each other and work together, seemingly so gracefully across disciplines, time and space, with such goodwill-a triumph for which opera is not always noted.

I read the comments [in the booklet] and listen to the collaboration of poets and musicians on New Growth: Shauna Holiman & Friends, I have the illusion of being there-standing close to creation, seeing connections, mosaics of talent and grace, hearing meaning and value formed.
—Phyllis G. Westover in Potpourri: A Quarterly Magazine of the Literary Arts

The "emotional range of the music is remarkable", at times "as stately as Ralph Vaughn Williams," at times "as rich as Chopin", and at times "reminiscent of great suspense film scores".
—Gary Evans, author of Music Inspired by Art: A Guide to Recordings (Comment to reviewer Cy Dillon above)

Sweet Perfection [five stars] In these times of banal and insipid music here is a breath of fresh ear...the variety and depth and sheer beauty of this CD is amazing. All the artists show exceptional insight and talent. Ms. Holiman gives a knock-out performance of power and grace. Her voice seems to have limitless range and clarity; she's a musical delight. I just love this CD. It's perfect for nearly all occasions. I like listening to it on Sunday mornings, an ideal way to start a new week. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for something unique and new and inspiring. In fact, what are you waiting for? Order it now!!!

Superb soprano: Immensely gifted soprano Shauna Holiman has gathered a group of poets, composers and musicians to create this CD and the result is a stunning and courageous collection of songs. It is at the same time melancholic and joyous, unpredictable and accessible. The words and the music work together as an organic seamless whole, in spite of all the different artists involved. They are all doing an amazing job, but Holiman's passionate and impeccable performance is outstanding. This is music of heartbreaking beauty.

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Last night at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canadian Mezzo Soprano Marcia Swanston and the Blue Engine String Quartet, with guest pianist Barbara Pritchard, played to a sincere and appreciative crowd. "The Life of the Bee", a song group by L. Hoiby, began the second set of the programme. The first song's first line was "that the world is painfully beautiful, painfully sad." The dual emotionality being conveyed in this very first lyric is only the beginning of what the ensemble would explore during this group. The five songs showcased some exceptional ensemble work on the part of all musicians as the songs went from playful, to bitter, to power-evoking, to swarming. The Blue Engine String Quartet consists of Jennifer Jones and Anne Simons on violins, Margot Aldrich on viola, and Hilary Brown on cello. The quartet and the piano buzzed, hummed, swarmed and danced all over while Swanston told the story. Marcia Swanston is a voice professor at Dalhousie University and keeps a busy performing schedule in the Maritimes and in Canada.
—ModBlog, L.P., Review of "Vocal Cordes II" concert on April 4, 2005

Lee Hoiby's song cycle The Life of the Bee was premiered at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on April 6, 2002. This cycle consists of five songs with texts by Jeffrey Beam, drawn from a larger work-in-progress of the same name; the poems characterize the various residents and activities of a bee hive. The first movement, "Millennium Approaches", is brief elegy to the spent blossoms which the bees have used to maintain themselves and their world: the gently undulating descending lines in the cello and piano frame the spare and allusive text. "The Spirit of the Hive", with its darting and buzzing sixteenth-note figures in the instrumental parts, speaks of the irresistible call of wildflowers to the bees of the hive, and "The Queen" portrays the fierce self-identification of an ancient queen bee with her expanding kingdom.

The sharp, march-like rhythms of "The Sting" underline the defiant challenge of the worker bees provide to anyone who would threaten the hive. "The Swarm" evokes the exultant power of a bee swarm as it bursts forth to seek for blossoms and fruit, propelled by racing sextuplets in the accompaniment. The final phrase "This a thing, some will say, men will not do" epitomises the singularity of the species, and Hoiby sets it lightly, quoting the instrumental figures which opened the cycle. His setting throughout the cycle demonstrates the craft of using music to enhance a text without overwhelming or distorting it, and provides an apt vehicle for Beam's short, precise phrases and arresting natural images.
—Program notes from Reflections of Eden, performed by the Talisker Players, Vilma Indra Vitols, mezzosoprano, Peter Longworth, piano, Trinity's St. Paul's Centre, Toronto, Canada (February 16, 2005)

Email: jeffbeam@email.unc.edu
URL: http://www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam/reviews_bee.html
Last updated: August 20, 2008