Album Notes

Composer/Pianist Craig Urquhart
and Tenor Michael Slattery Release New CD

Secret and Divine Signs Combines
Vocal and Solo Piano Works

Five stars, BBC Music Magazine

"-the songs of Urquhart, with their seamless tonal melodies and rippling
keyboard accompaniments...the unrelenting beauty of Slattery's lyric tenor voice...heart-melting immediacy...The listener is transported into a state of tranquil contemplation."

Five Stars, Andrew Stewart - Classic FM Magazine
"Love poems both of excitement and disillusionment, anticipation and memory, receive well-judged settings and accomplished performances, and the results make for rewarding listening."

Glyn Pursglove – Musicweb International


“Significantly, Craig Urquhart worked as a musical assistant to Leonard Bernstein for a number of years and there is the same sense of approachability to his music. The share the facility to make an original setting of words and richly sinewed music sound deceptively simple… Michael Slattery, has a fine, clear voice, secure throughout the wide range demanded by these pieces, and beautifully modulated. The recital also has the obvious advantage that the composer plays the piano, and his solo pieces, interspersed between the songs, give equal pleasure.”

Serena Fenwick, Musical Pointers



Composer/pianist Craig Urquhart and tenor Michael Slattery have released Secret and Divine Signs: The Music of Craig Urquhart, a collection of vocal and solo piano works. The CD is the New York City-based Urquhart’s sixth recording produced independently by the artist’s own label, Heart Earth Music, LLC, and his first in association with Avie Records. This is the first recording the fellow Americans have done together.

The collaboration between Urquhart and Slattery began after the composer heard the tenor sing “Maria” from West Side Story in a Paris concert devoted to the music of Leonard Bernstein. Urquhart, who had a close musical relationship with the late composer, felt he was hearing for the first time the voice he had been composing for all along. The culminating CD reflects a unique vision forged by the two artists: the synergy between lyric art songs set against a canvas of solo piano pieces. The songs take their verse from poems by Emily Dickinson, Ron Draddy, Hermann Hesse, D. H. Lawrence, and Walt Whitman. Interspersed between the songs are a selection of solo piano works, which create a bridge of shared melodic themes between groups of vocal pieces. Although Urquhart had written many of the works prior to meeting Slattery, two of the album’s solo piano works –– “Venetian Snowfall” and “Secret Spaces” –– were written specifically for the CD after the artists began working together.

“It was a joy collaborating with Michael and sharing our ideas, which have resulted in a unique vision of presenting a song recital on disc,” Urquhart explains. “It was Michael’s idea to interweave my songs ‘without words’ and the songs ‘with words,’ creating a unified program that I believe creates a satisfying listening journey.”

Craig Urquhart’s songs have been performed and recorded by Thomas Hampson, Lauren Wagner, and other artists. His last recording, Streamwalker, was honored in the Contemporary Instrumental Top Twenty of 2004 by Michael Debbage of Wind and Wire. Craig’s five previous recordings include: Streamwalker (2004); Evocation (2000); Epitaphs and Portraits (1994); The Dream of the Ancient Ones (1993), and Songs Without Words (1990). Urquhart has also toured throughout the word, and in April he performed to sold-out audiences during a recital tour of Japan. To know more about Craig, please visit craigurquhart.com.

Michael Slattery is a Juilliard graduate who has sung with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. He made his UK debut in February 2005 singing Candide with the BBC Concert Orchestra. This past May Michael sang the title role in Monteverdi’s Orfeo at The Châtelet Theater in Paris. To know more about Michael, please visit michaelslattery.com.


Executive Producer Melanne Mueller

Produced by Craig Urquhart, Michael Slattery and Scott Petito

Piano Technician Alexander Ostrovsky