Review: Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski shined in Source Song Festival’s opening night concert

In these days when your average pop song can credit multiple writers, producers and collaborators, it’s refreshing to be reminded that the art of creating a song has traditionally been a far more small-scale affair. The composer and lyricist (sometimes the same person) combine words and music, then a singer and pianist — or perhaps a guitarist — deliver it to your ears, direct and free of distractions.

Great opportunities for such intimacy arrive each August courtesy of the Source Song Festival. For a week, composers, singers and pianists converge upon downtown Minneapolis, sharpen their skills, receive guidance from mentors, and perform concerts full of song in the lovely and acoustically sublime contemporary concert hall attached to Westminster Presbyterian Church.

On Monday evening, the festival presented its first concert of 2024, and it proved not only a sublime reminder of the magic that a song can conjure, but also of our great fortune in having so many brilliant Minnesota-based composers.

Among them are three women — Libby Larsen, Carol Barnett and Janika Vandervelde — who studied with University of Minnesota music professor Dominick Argento, one of the American composers who revived interest in the creation of new song cycles in the second half of the 20th century. And each had a song on the program during Monday’s Source opener. But the concert’s high point was the premiere of Reinaldo Moya’s “2 Canciones de Alfonsina Storni,” a pair of pieces that possessed a deeply engaging and complex blend of emotions.

They were summoned forth chiefly by mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski, the festival’s founder, who soloed on four of the concert’s seven works. The Moya songs were an ideal showcase for Osowski’s interpretive skills, each phrase beautifully crafted, particularly when the music was most gentle and earnest. Pianist Casey Rafn was equally expressive.

The evening’s most passionate performance came from the tandem of bass-baritone Rodolfo Nieto and pianist Ahmed Anzaldúa, who teamed up for Victor E. Márquez-Barrios’ “A Path Home/Camino a Casa,” a work that was born in the Twin Cities, but had never been previously performed here. Based upon interviews with local residents who had immigrated to Minnesota from Latin America, Márquez-Barrios has given voice to their reflections upon the intersection of place and identity. It’s a very dramatic work, bursting with beauty, yet with anxious interjections from the piano.

Evocative lyrics also came from the pen of poet Viviana Gil, who provided the words for Laura Nevitt’s “anger in open mouths: three sweet songs.” Pianist Erika Switzer made the piece’s repeated ostinatos hypnotic, especially on the transporting nightscape, “If I wasn’t scared of walking home at night,” Osowski delivering the lyrics like a master storyteller.

But the mezzo was outstanding all night, from a captivating opening duet with soprano Maria Jette on Vandervelde’s “Item de Virginibus” to the closing movement of Larsen’s “Me,” a setting of text from the memoir of 20th-century Minneapolis writer Brenda Ueland. With each passing piece, Osowski strengthened her eloquent case for the power of song and why it deserves its own festival.

What and when: Songs by visiting composers and Minnesota composers, 7:30 p.m. Wed.; a recital by soprano Ana María Martínez and pianist Myra Huang, 7:30 p.m. Thu.; and a showcase for the festival’s singers and pianists, 7:30 p.m. Fri.

Where: Westminster Hall, Nicollet Mall and Alice Rainville Place, Mpls.

Tickets: $25, available at sourcesongfestival.org

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.