For his third solo album, the dynamic American baritone Brian Mulligan has turned to three 21st-century American composers who are adept at weaving musical narratives around English texts. The disc’s title, ‘Alburnum’, is drawn from the fourth song in Gregory Spears’s Walden, set to verses by Henry David Thoreau, and specifies ‘the delicate, outer layers of recently grown wood found between the heartwood and the bark of a tree’, as Mulligan notes in the booklet. He considers the programme’s repertoire to be his ‘contribution to the living, growing tree of music’.

The song-cycles by Spears and Mason Bates and song by Missy Mazzoli are deeply rooted in art-song traditions while bringing fresh perspectives to the genre. In his affecting collection, Spears blends touches of minimalism with post-Romantic lyricism and hints of Schubertian majesty. As the singer and pianist venture through various states of Thoreau’s visionary and mystical yearnings, the music conveys wonder in glowing and fervent sonic imagery.

Mazzoli’s ‘As Long as We Live’ is set to words by another titanic American poet, Walt Whitman, from Songs of the Open Road (1856). The music is as rapturous as the text implies, with increasing urgency reflecting the narrator’s appeal for love and constancy. Mazzoli made several versions of the song, including one for choir, electric guitar, string quartet and piano; the version for baritone and piano is potent. Bates’s Songs from the Plays comprises seven of Kenneth Koch’s 27 poems extracted from imaginary plays. The subjects embrace fantastical and romantic episodes that Bates paints in eloquent and flavourful flourishes.

Mulligan uses the spectrum of his vibrant artistry to penetrate the expressive depths of these songs. Whether the music calls for stalwart declamation or hushed utterance, the baritone is in handsome command. Pianist Timothy Long is the ideal collaborator, his playing flexible, shapely and balanced.