On November 20th, 2025, the Boston troubaDours (tbd) debuted their first composer collective concert at the Church of the Covenant. Comprised of composers Yangfan Xu, Tomer Rosen, and Alexander Matheson, The Boston troubaDours were joined by guest composer Alex Barsom and members of a nearby poetry workshop and collective (Itay Dayan, Chia Lam, Farah Masud, and Joe Webster) in an evening of new music and new poetry. This review will focus exclusively on the music of the program, as that is under the purview of a musical editorial.
The composers each had a set devoted for their own new works, with poetry readings interspersed. The first set went to composer, pianist, and Church of the Covenant organist Yangfan Xu, opening the evening with the world premiere of her two piano composition Whisker Suite (this reviewer had the pleasure of seeing this same piece workshopped at the Texas New Music Festival 2025 with the Shen-Blagulyak Duo in Houston, Texas). Fellow troubaDour Tomer Rosen joined Xu in the three-movement suite inspired by the composers’ cats. The first movement, “Purrlude,” was extremely short and spotlit Xu’s lyricism, expertly executed by the pair. The second movement, “Catankerous,” saw initially some heavy playing that cleared up as the piece moved out of the piano’s notoriously resonant low register. Rosen demonstrated, after some initial muddiness from the low register, some well-performed accompaniment playing in the lower registers. The third movement, “Meowmento,” highlighted Xu’s light touch amidst some wonderful extended harmony, expanding the duet’s harmonic palette well in the last moments.
Two Songs on Poems of Emily Dickinson followed, with soprano Shanti Flower-Puja joined by pianist/composer Lingbo Ma. “Nobody Knows This Little Rose” began with a surprise: Fowler-Puja hummed the melody at first before breaking into the text. Though at some times it was a little tricky to hear Fowler-Puja (arguably due to the church acoustics), Ma supported her well with delicate and tasteful accompaniments. It never became too heavy or full to overpower Fowler-Puja. “I Held a Jewel in My Fingers” provided a welcome contrast with a faster tempo against the first song and a drastic, more active piano texture from Ma.
In a Mellow Mood rounded out the first set, with Armando Ortiz Montenegro reprising a performance of Xu’s solo violin work from the Massachusetts Music Creators Forum performance that led to the creation of The Boston troubaDours. Long lines that spanned several octaves contrasted the bright snaps of pizzicato throughout. Ortiz Montenegro moved easily around the instrument, also utilizing a baroque bow to perform this work to make some passages easier for himself. Xu demonstrated her ability to cast wide nets of compositional possibility with small cells of ideas, one or two small gestures forming larger expansive lines across the overall work. One final burst of activity from Ortiz Montenegro showed his clarity of articulation in an otherwise extremely legato work, ending the first set with a proper bang.
Set Two highlighted Tomer Rosen; it began with “Libi Bamizrach,” with the composer singing the text by Solomon Ibn Gabriol and Xu accompanying at the piano. Rosen’s singing this Hebrew prayer felt authentic, as it connects back to his faith, while Xu supported him with a constant hammered drone of C major throughout. The hymn interacted well with the drone, played both firmly but lightly by Xu, while every gesture of the hymn felt deliberate and extremely calculated. Movie Nights Sonata, originally a work for horn and piano, came to us in the composer’s organ arrangement for Xu. A slow opening with a penetrating bass pedal figure gave way to lots of high register action, even utilizing the organ’s mechanical Harp/Celesta in a tour-de-force of the organ’s four manuals and 49 stops. Xu showed her comfort on The King of Instruments, easily maneuvering the console on imagined movie themes. Rosen’s reprisal from the MMCF concert was “In Bruton Town,” a setting of a Middle Ages song for voice and piano more akin to Third Stream practice than strict classical folk song setting. Rosen on piano accompanied Jillian Moore on voice. The tune felt off kilter with the choice of rhythms, giving it a lilting and unpredictable quality that was welcome after a lot of otherwise rhythmically even music. Moore’s more folk-like singing paired well with the material as Rosen’s brusque accompaniment filled in the gaps well. This was definitely not the time for classical style performance, and Rosen, as a distinctly self-aware composer, knew that when composing this end of the second set.
Barsom’s guest composition appeared here, with his Songs of Joy and Sorrow movements “Leaves and “Morning,” all on texts by Sara Teasdale. Rosen stayed at the piano while Fowler-Puja took the stage once again, a combination of performers from each section of the different sets. The two art songs easily flowed into one another in an almost attacca-like manner, “Leaves” being interrupted effectively by “Morning” and its more declamatory motives and text. Rosen showed his restraint on a far less active accompaniment while Fowler-Puja showed the entirety of her range off, including her light high register and extremely heavy low register. With the lid of the piano closed, this time around the audience could hear Fowler-Puja slightly easier, the diction of the songs now extremely clear and the projection helped.
Matheson rounded out the night with the final set of pieces, starting with Aequsion for solo piano, with Xu once again performing. Matheson chose much more dissonant language in contrast to Xu and Rosen, already making his set a far different orbit to navigate around than his fellow collective mates. Xu showed her readiness to move between extremely different small clusters, gestures, and articulations as Matheson’s language floated around the piano in extremely extended harmony. Matheson then took to the piano himself to perform his more improvisatory pieces, a combination of two works in Sky Bike and Saturnine. Seamlessly flowing from one to another (almost to a fault, as it was not exactly clear which piece was which!), Matheson finished with very thin and sparse notes into thick and fortified middle/low-middle register figures, uniting two otherwise far separated hands into one constantly roiling gesture. In some ways, ironically, the ease at which Matheson played reminded this reviewer of jazz pianist like Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk, although taking far more aggressive and dissonant approaches to the music than they did. To end the evening, the entire group joined Matheson in a reprisal of the improvisatory Sky Bicycle, though right as Xu was about to enter on the organ, when the console shorted out. That left Matheson and Rosen to offer four-hands on piano, reiterating material from the first section of the improvisation (unbroken from Matheson’s solo set). Rosen took the higher register while Matheson croaked out the lower register, the pair ending the evening warmly.
The Boston troubaDours comprises an interesting small collective of composers with distinct voices who actively support one another, especially when they are all truly different voices occupying the same space.