Wider View - Complete Cycle of Songs for High Voice and Piano

2001-recording of songs by H. Leslie Adams: 'Love Rejoices' includes songs for The Wider View.

H. Leslie Adams' The Wider View is a panoramic portrait of human emotions, from songs of love and the blues to songs of nature and the human spirit. It seeks passion's source and its ability to be sustained.

The journey begins with a need to fulfill an inner yearning, resulting in a search. That experience is depicted in Paul Laurence Dunbar's stirring verse, "To the Road!" 

Varying degrees of self-fulfillment reveal a need to pause and reflect, which in turn evoke past memories and yearnings. This period of introspection is portrayed in Langston Hughes· dialectical,  Homesick Blues.

Continuing onward, relationships are created that are so magnified as to move beyond physical limitations. In "Li'I' Gal" and companion "My Man" Paul Laurence Dunbar employs vernacular verse, light-heartedly depicting affection between a man and a woman. 

Recognizing the broad spectrum of devotion, the journey turns to experiencing loss in Georgia Douglas Johnson's "Love Come and Gone." Such poignancy creates an unsettling question to the soul. 

A new horizon is identified with R. H. Grenville's "The Wider View." The learned, imitated and expressed nature of true tenderness emerges, coming from within and lasting forever. 

James Dillet Freeman's "Love Rejoices" summarizes the power of passion as a profound inner expression projected outward. At this point, the journey comes to an end on a note of celebration.