Bukowski’s Sensitivity Emerges in Song

Topographical and poetic justice descended on the Zipper Concert Hall Sunday afternoon. The up-and-coming bass Valerian Ruminski gave a program that included the premiere of his personally commissioned songs, written by composer Persis Parshall Vehar to texts by Charles Bukowski, whose alcohol-soaked, celebrated life and art unfolded within miles of this very venue.

Bukowski poems as the basis for new art song? Is there something wrong with this picture? Not really. Just as L.A. crime novel virtuoso James Ellroy draws on Beethoven for creative inspiration, Bukowski was a great lover of classical music. Also, not incidentally, Bukowski’s bark was famously fiercer than his bite, and his best work conveys introspective tenderness beneath the romantically self-destructive swagger. Particularly in the soft-edged pieces performed Sunday, with nary an expletive, a revealing tenderness lurked. In “the bluebird,” against a pleasingly polytonal harmonic backdrop that alternately recalled Weill and Messiaen, Ruminski purred, “there’s a bluebird in my heart that/wants to get out/but I’m too clever, I only let him out/at night sometimes/when everybody’s asleep.” Such is the Bukowski duality, the sweetness hiding in the sour mash.

A languid melody rubs up against a terse harmonic setting in “no help for that,” to moving effect. Less artful was the misplaced barfly persona creeping into “consummation of grief,” which smacked more of Weimar Republic carousing than that of L.A.’s skid row.

While an impressive work-in-progress, the verdict on the song cycle--called “From Buk’s Battered Heart”--is still out, until a more substantial percentage of the proposed 18 songs are finished. For the moment, six songs, including the teasingly short, sneeze-and-you-miss-it “yes sirree!,” give enticing glimpses of a fresh sort of whiskey-breathed art song.

The remainder of Ruminski’s recital program illustrated the young singer’s formidable talent, including detailed takes on Handel and Schubert lieder (“To Music” was especially poignant). An aria from “La Boheme” (which he recently sang with the New York City Opera) allowed him to remove his coat with dramatic rationale, warming up to the Bukowski dressing-down, and then, with Gershwin songs, some Americana lite to close. Bukowski may or may not have approved.