Allen Sapp - So Smooth, So Sweet (Chelsea Hart Melcher; Paul Melcher)

Information

Composer: Allen Sapp

• The Lady and the Lute
• Nursery Rhymes
• 2 Songs
• Affliction

Chelsea Hart Melcher, soprano

Paul Melcher, piano

Date: 2025

Label: Navona

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Chelsea Hart Melcher’s debut album, SO SMOOTH, SO SWEET, vibrantly introduces works by Harvard composer Allen Sapp, highlighting Melcher’s emotive and powerful singing alongside Sapp’s lyrical text setting, harmonic richness, and evolving style across decades. This album features the charming early neoclassical work Nursery Rhymes, two powerfully lyrical and expressive song cycles, Affliction and The Lady and the Lute (both set to English Renaissance poetry), and two whimsical and playful songs set to Romantic era poetry from Sapp’s later period, “Anonymous Eponymous” and “Riley Set Wryly.”

Allen Sapp (1922–1999) was an American composer known for a catalog of over 140 works, including more than 40 for solo piano. He studied under Walter Piston at Harvard and privately with Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger. After serving in World War II, he returned to Harvard for graduate studies and taught there until 1958. Sapp later held leadership roles at SUNY Buffalo, Florida State University, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In 1980, he resumed composing and teaching, completing over 60 new works in his final two decades, cementing his legacy as a prolific and influential figure in American music.

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