Composer Phyllis Tate was a very fond admirer of uunusual sounds and colors. She has one work for saxophone and strings, another for chorus, string quartet and celesta and the works on this collection via Kurrent Music. This collection showcases some of the works done after 1943 that she didn’t destroy. She was very self-criticism. One very entertaining opera she wrote is “The Lodger.” It’s scenes and adaptations are really colorful and have seemingly the ordinary orchestral colors with a few odd percussion instruments thrown in to enhance the texture and give it originality. There are also elements of twelve-tone dissonances in the strings that flow with the singers’ voices in each movement. The opera is about a man and a women trying to do business together. They find that comedy has stricken them and here they are acting it out. It’s really a fun opera to listen to and one of the few works that have survived in Phyllis’s repertoire.
