The singer on the beautiful collection of songs with words by Langston Hughes which was a CCM just a few months ago was the terrific tenor, Darryl Taylor. This month we feature him again but performing the works of a composer left off of that collection, H. Leslie Adams. This disc includes songs with poetry not just by Hughes, but by an impressive array of 11 different writers, notably Edna St. Vincent Millay and Paul Laurence Dunbar, and including one song ("Amazing Grace") with text by Adams himself.

Nightsongs, originally titled Songs on Texts by Afro-American Poets, is an early collection of songs, dating from 1961, when the composer was in his late-twenties (he was born 30 December 1932), and it shows all the verve and élan of youth. It contains poetry by a number of writers, but it is Hughes who we return to, yet again, for this CCM. The song, "Drums of Tragedy," is a good representation of Adams's basic style: tonal, highly melodic, immediately affective, engaging, and evocative. The 3+3+2 metric swing of the song lends a subtle insistence to the beating drums of the lyrics, while the repetition of the "dying breath" at the end is an effective example of quasi-word painting. Taylor, of course, handles it masterfully.