Gregory Spears is an American composer of instrumental and operatic works that blend aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music.
Still, originality just comes through sometimes, as the composer Gregory Spears demonstrates in his personal, boldly quirky score for the wrenching, and sadly timely, opera Fellow Travelers.
[19] Zachary Woolfe in his review for The New York Times describes the work: "The agonies and pleasures of Castor and Patience,... are like those of a less densely orchestrated Puccini.
As in Tosca, La bohème or Madama Butterfly, unabashedly, even shamelessly effusive vocal lines draw us poignantly close to characters in a rending situation: here, a Black family riven by disagreement over whether to sell part of a precious plot of land.
Starting with neoclassical-style clarity, he builds textured, complex musical structures that sound old and new at the same time, and his skillful text settings use minimalist-like repetition to give Mr. Vavrek's pointed, thoughtful words even more power and emotional specificity.
"[25] Steve Smith, in his New York Times review of the opera Paul's Case, based on the Willa Cather short story of the same title, described the score: "Mr. Spears's elegantly spare music, with its gamelan-redolent modes and clockwork repetitions, Baroque vocal fillips, intricately woven ensembles and dramatically placed dissonances, further infuses the tale with a sense of ritual and inevitability.