This Glorious Earth: A Concert in Celebration of Earth Day

Paul Winter and The Paul Winter Consort: Paul Winter: saxophone; Eugene Friesen: cello; Henrique Eisenmann: piano; and Ray Nagem: organ.

Paul Winter and The Paul Winter Consort gave us an exquisite concert in St. John the Divine’s (New York City) on Earth Day with his quartet. It was called This Glorious Earth: A Concert in Celebration of Earth Day.

In the enormous cathedral, the audience was limited to a few hundred people seated before the apse. The venue, with its colossal columns and the delicate flames in its ciborium lamps, enhanced the evening of Mr. Winter’s spiritual, life-affirming music. Mr. Winter compared it to the belly of a whale.

The concert began with a couple of lines solo from Mr. Winter’s saxophone. When the piano and cello joined, they enhanced the sax, giving the music more complexity but keeping the sax in the foreground.

The second piece opened with actual whale songs — then the sax and the cello literally imitated them. The cetacean vocalists haunted the piece intermittently. Wonderful.

Mr. Winter talked about hearing a wood thrush, and then he imitated its three-line song. The call was in the key of C, he explained, and corresponded to the opening of Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier. What brilliant musicology this is!

The last piece opened again with whale songs, which Mr. Winter again imitated. At the end, he invited us to join him in whale song — vocalizing — and we continued during the standing ovation.

Sometimes the piano’s delicate notes fell like rain; sometimes they were more intense, as during Henrique Eisenmann’ solo, enthusiastically received.

Sometimes the organ sounded like the breathing lungs of the Earth. As overpowering as an organ can be, Ray Nagem kept it restrained behind the sax (except for the glorious organ solo with which the audience exited).

Eugene Friesen plucked or bowed his cello as the passage demanded, joining with the sax or all three other instruments. Marvelous.

Of course, Mr. Winter’s incomparable saxophone was playful, soothing, mysterious as needed. He expressed voices that might evade other saxophonists, making the instrument sound like a woman’s voice, or a whale’s voice, or a bird’s voice, as the occasion demanded.

When the sounds of nature are involved, they of course front the piece. Otherwise, the lead is suggested, not stated. This is not new age music; it’s the musical equivalent of impressionism, jazz as Monet.

If the concert had a flaw, it was not the fault of the musicians. The acoustics in the largest cathedral in the world, coupled with amplification, can be tricky. Of course, the organ was totally at home, and the acoustics enhanced the sax and the cello. But the piano’s timbre was not always so lucky — some of Mr. Eisenmann’s wonderful work was inevitably muddied by cathedralic resonance.

Paul Winter and The Paul Winter Consort are one of the country’s invaluable musical treasure. Let’s hope to hear from them for years to come.