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Review: American Declarations
Nigel Simeone of International Record Review
June 27, 2014
Melissa Dunphy was born in 1980. Her text is an unusual one: Philip Spooner's public testimony - What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? - in support of same-sex marriage, delivered at a hearing in Maine in 2009 when he was 86. This remarkable text is printed in the booklet, which is just as well, since if I have one criticism of the excellent choir, it is that its diction is sometimes indistinct. Dunphy's music has hints of an almost Copland-like robustness and makes effective use of imitation in a way that suggests a twenty-first-century composer with a strong sense of counterpoint.