Distant Playing Fields
With Martin Hennessy accompanying the songs of Amy Beach and William Mayer performed by soprano, Mary Ellen Callahan.
Check out my four new singles from The Pleasing Recollection starring Michael Kelly on Spotify and other digital platforms!
"Weaving a range of musical genres together, leading from his classical background, Hennessy has come up with a unique and rather magical genre of his own. Landing in the space between art song and smoky supper club, The Pleasing Recollection is a classic song cycle performed as cabaret." --The Front Row Center
Songs from the Age of the Closet: Art Songs by Gay Composers
Elif Savas, soprano
Martin Hennessy: Pianist
Also includes Hennessy’s Lost Sense with a text by Constantin Popa
Ah! Love, I Shall Find Thee: Songs of Gena Branscombe
Martin Hennessy: Piano
Kathleen Shimeta: Mezzo-soprano
Lenoriana
Includes: 3 Dickinson Poems by Martin Hennessy
My River Runs To Thee
Let down the bars, O Death!
I taste a liquor never brewed
with baritone, Elem Eley and pianist, J.J. Penna
Five Borough Song Book
Featuring Hennessy's setting of Claude McKay's The City’s Love performed by baritone, David McFerrin and pianist, Jocelyn Dueck
Drifts and Shadows: American Song for the New Millennium
Elem Eley, baritone and J.J Penna, piano
Includes: Three songs from Hennessy's Ruminations/Poems of William Bronk with Bruce Williamson, b flat clarinet and Martin Hennessy, piano
I thought it was Harry
You get to Gilead
Of the Natural World
"These men mean business when it comes to song-writing, and it’s comforting to know that the American art song is in good hands other than just those of Ned Rorem’s.”
“Hennessy’s …settings are deliciously odd, with the insouciance in ‘You Get to Gilead’ reminding me of parts of Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King, but comic, and without the grunts and shrieks. The clarinet swings. The vocalise at the end of ‘Of the Natural World’ after the line ‘and I grow impatient and practice the world’s song”, is structurally and practically brilliant…Buy this record."
— American Record Guide
Discography
Ned Rorem: Women's Voices & Songs of Martin Hennessy
Martin Hennessy: Pianist/Composer
Heidi Skok: Soprano
Includes: Mother to Son, I’ll Love you, I thank you god and In the Stillness from Four Songs Volume l And Sonnet for Michael, Mentor and Moon Poem from Four Songs Volume ll
"Songs of Martin Hennessy, the disc’s insightful pianist…overflow with poignant and dramatic splendor." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Hennessy handles Rorem’s difficult piano writing with brilliance and also writes creative, improvisatory, and moving songs.” — American Record Guide
“In the Stillness, a love lyric to Hennessy’s own verse, is particularly attractive.”
— Patrick J. Smith, Opera News
HOME by acclaimed mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert is a collection of new works written for the artist from eight composers and librettists representing diverse backgrounds and musical styles.
The CD includes my setting of Paul Eluard's Nous Deux for mezzo-soprano and string quintet.
"Martin Hennessy’s setting of Paul Eluard’s “Nous deux” lulls the listener with a tonal, post-Romantic approach, then grows stormy before returning to the comforting opening sonorities that represent two people at home wherever they find themselves, as long as they’re together." --Opera News
"Other highlights include a loving couple in the warm embrace of a string quintet in Martin Hennessy’s “Nous Deux." --Financial Times