Courtney Bryan’s new ‘Blessed’ for Opera Philadelphia is a contemplative, distinguished work | Review

Opera Philadelphia’s latest digital commission, the music-video piece Blessed, is gentle-tempered, contemplatively paced, musically distinguished 22-minute piece inspired by last year’s protests in response to police brutality against Black men and women, and also by the Christian Bible’s promise from Matthew 5 that the meek will inherit the earth.

Pianist/composer Courtney Bryan, who created the piece in conjunction with filmmaker Tiona Nekkia McClodden, also drew on her musical experiences in the Anglican church. It begins streaming at 8 p.m. Friday.

The meekness here is not a submissiveness that some might associate with the word. “Meek” can also mean the restraint of one’s inner power as a means of making room for the larger presence of God. Bryan defines it more specifically, as “humbly focused on standing up for what is right.”

The highly effective score is based on Bryan’s pianistic improvisations, which are something like jazz great Bill Evans’ — only more lush and warm — and also with moments that are expressionistically spare. Her improvisations are layered and augmented with what the creative team describes as “sonic quilting,” engineered by Robert Kaplowitz.

Opening moments have an ethereal flourish, something like wind chimes amid video images including religious iconography. Cutting to images of the ocean’s edge, an eerie wordless chorus enters the realm of ambient music. Rumbling piano textures take over with background and foreground antiphony.

Christ’s Beatitudes from Matthew 5 are alternately spoken, whispered, and sung by Janinah Burnett and Damian Norfleet, the voices tumbling all around each other.

As quoted here, the passages suggest that human misery is endured for the sake of heavenly reward, but there are also empowering moments of individual agency and responsibility. The work draws from Matthew 5:11: “People revile. People persecute. People utter all kinds of evil against you.” Then, the mirror is held up with the exclamation, “You are people!”

The music comes to a gorgeous Puccinian climax with full-throated exclamations of “Rejoice and be glad” and an endorsement of the biblical “peacemakers,” ending with a celebratory call-and-response vocal track.

Shot in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and New York City, the video element generally is less successful. Much of the visual imagery is mundane — the laptop screen, a piano not being played — implying much but saying little. Screen texts give biographical snippets of religious leaders that leave you wanting more.

Blessed premieres on the Opera Philadelphia Channel at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 26. It is available with a season pass, as a seven-day rental for $10, or as part of the $25 Digital Commissions Bundle.