A CHANGE IS GONNA COME:
with Palaver Strings
Farayi Malek, vocalist
Azica Records
2025 GRAMMY AWARD NOMINEE:
BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM
ABOUT THE ALBUM
A Change Is Gonna Come celebrates the rich legacy of American protest songs, from beloved anthems to new commissions. Our arrangements of 1960s classics explore the sonic palette of strings and voice, with nods to the iconic originals as well as today’s cultural landscape, and the sound worlds of film scores, contemporary chamber music, fiddle, gospel, and more. These songs reflect on individual experiences of oppression and call us to join the collective work of liberation. A Change Is Gonna Come confronts our past and present and celebrates the act of protest as one of our most precious rights.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
GRAMOPHONE
“There is liberation in the timelessness of these songs and settings, be they old or brand new. And timelessness is what makes this quirky and haunting collection – a tapestry, if you like, of protest – memorable. Even the singer, the striking Nicholas Phan, is possessed of a voice which apparently makes no distinction between the shifting centuries of his repertoire and lends a wonderfully direct purity to a spiritual like Harry T Burleigh’s ‘Lovely, Dark and Lonely One’ at once deeply consoling and ravishing. So too the timeless resonance of ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’ and the Paul Robeson classic ‘I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill’ which sounds so eternal, ending as it does in Phan’s melting head voice – as far from Robeson’s sonorous bass as it’s possible to get.
I think it’s the apparent contradiction of styles that makes the album so intriguing. Dominic Salerni’s arrangement of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ blends folk and baroque in a magically earthy and unvarnished way replete with gruff double bass solo (not unlike Dylan’s own voice) and even the obligatory harmonica. I love the way in which Joni Mitchell’s ‘Fiddle and the Drum’ is kind of catapulted into the here and now with alarming string slides and a seismic disquieting upheaval in the final stanza.
Then there are the pithy and unsettling classical references which Salerni throws into Seeger’s ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’ from the funeral march of Mahler’s First Symphony to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Shostakovich’s war-torn Eighth Quartet. The Palaver Strings collective hurl themselves from one to the other like they naturally belong in the same universe as Seeger’s classic. Protest is protest no matter how you frame it. The disc even flashes back to 1673 and a fleeting duo from Biber’s Battaglia a 10 which evaporates in a spiral of smoke before we can fully grasp it.
The here and now – does the struggle ever end? – is represented by Errollyn Wallen’s specially commissioned Protest Songs. ‘Boom Boom’ (her text) makes good use of Phan’s plangent upper register and indeed the distinguishing factor both here and in ‘Song for the People’ (Frances Allen Watkins Harper) is the uplift inherent in Wallen’s rangy vocal lines. They really sing…”
THE ARTS DESK
“Here’s an entertaining collection of protest songs, old and new. Having them sung by a tenor and string orchestra is a risky prospect on paper; you worry that the originals will be sanitised beyond recognition. Nicholas Phan and Palaver strings avoid the trap: Domenic Salerni’s arrangements are never saccharine...Phan’s clear, lyrical vocals are balm for the ears: try him in Salerni’s witty version of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, incorporating snatches of Mahler, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
The disc contains the premiere recording of Errolyn Wallen’s Protest Songs, commissioned by these performers. They sound like arias in these hands, especially a setting of abolitionist poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “Song for the People”, Phan really hitting the heights when singing the lines “Our world, so worn and weary/Needs music, pure and strong/To hush the jangle and discords/Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.” We get a spiky extract from Biber’s Battalia à 10 and a haunting arrangement by Jonathan Bingham of “Strange Fruit”…the album concludes with an exquisite, straight rendition of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” sung by Farayi Malek. A superb album, beautifully produced.”
THE BAY AREA REPORTER
“…the dozen songs on this new album…come like manna from heaven to anyone who is unusually susceptible to earworms. Having these songs in your ears will turn an ordinary walk into a brisk march. The temptation will be to sing them out loud. Of course, the out, San Francisco-based Phan, as honest a musician as walks among us, does the singing part better than even his most ardent fan could. But the sheer energy in his new project —itself said to be a long time comin', and in the event a triumph of devotion over documentation— is infectious. Just in time, you might add. There's a pivotal election on the near horizon, and a message of this new CD is its implied invitation to all who love freedom, to make their feelings not just heard but loved, their demands as unforgettable as they are unassailable…The fresh, galvanizing sound of the Palaver String Ensemble makes for a musical partnership that goes far beyond accompaniment…
…The winds of change having blown, Phan immediately weighs in with Phil Ochs's "What Are You Fighting For," dispatched with the high tessitura that shows his voice at its most beautiful. What stands out in this new release is the hard-won freedom in Phan's singing itself. With no compromise of its characteristic, meticulous musicality, it's wild. The voices in the songs are those of people with no desire to take to the recital stage, and Phan finds the right accent for each…
…The singing is free-wheeling, often indulging in the shifts of vocal register that move freely between "normal" voice, head voice, and all-out falsetto…A career breathing life into Schubert's strophic songs and the folksong settings of Benjamin Britten has made Phan a master of putting over songs with multiple verses. In "What Are You Fighting For?" Phan captures their increasing intensity…"A Change Is Gonna Come" is as much an invitation as a historical artifact. With the very real prospect of the hard-won gains in gay rights being reversed, now, there's a pressing need for change to come again. Readers of a certain age will remember when the now-month-long Gay Pride celebration was best known for its march of a parade and called "Gay Freedom Day." The songs on Phan's album, drawn from earlier but equally tumultuous times, share their resounding plea for freedom.”
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
“Portland-based Palaver Strings has long placed social justice at the heart of its mission…this new release, A Change is Gonna Come, celebrates the power and possibilities of the protest song. In doing so, it takes the long view of music-as-protest to span some 400 years of repertoire, albeit with a strong focus on 20th-century American popular music.
A number of tracks feature a solo voice and for the most part these form the album’s highlights. A pensive arrangement by Jonathan Bingham of ‘Strange Fruit’ is given a beautifully velvety rendition by jazz vocalist Farayi Malek. The title track, astutely arranged by Dominic Salerni, also finds Malek on terrific form and brings fresh energy to Sam Cooke’s anthem of hope. Two newly-commissioned songs by Errolyn Wallen, ‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Song for the People’ also bring real bite to the album and feature assured performances from American tenor Nicholas Phan…an enjoyable album, curated and performed from the heart.”
A Change is Gonna Come was supported in part by Nicholas Phan's solo recording projects, which is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
Contributions for the charitable purposes of Nicholas Phan's solo recording projects must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
