Lori Laitman (b1955) is one of America’s most prolific art-song composers, with an impressive catalogue of recordings from several labels, most notably Albany and Acis, both of which have issued all-Laitman discs. Acis’s first, some seven years ago, featured Holocaust 1944, a striking half-hour-long cycle for baritone and double bass, well received by Richard Whitehouse (11/14). Laitman’s songs may not have Rorem’s exceptional lyricism, or the drama or mercurial character of Copland or Ives, but they touch on important topics and always sound eminently singable. This accounts for their wide appeal to the goodly number of singers (there are eight here) who have recorded them over the past 28 years (and Acis has plans for another all-Laitman release next year).

Orange Afternoon Lover (2006, rev 2019-20) is a fine case in point, a triptych setting Margaret Atwood poems charting the onset and collapse of a relationship. It is nicely sung by Maureen McKay, whose tonal qualities I prefer to Eileen Strempel’s. McKay’s other performance is of ‘Marriage of Many Years’ (2018), Laitman’s 65th-birthday gift for her husband, Bruce Rosenblum, with the composer at the keyboard; all the other tracks feature Laitman’s younger son, Andrew Rosenblum, as accompanist.

Laitman’s music often shows a light touch, even when dealing with emotional matters, but there is humour aplenty, too, whether in the final songs – ‘You know this’ and ‘Wild nights’ respectively – of the cycles Dark Spring (2010, rev 2017) and Days and Nights (1995, rev 2019), or in the satirical suffragist cycle for four voices and two pianos Are Women People? (to my mind the finest work here, crisply sung by the Fourth Coast Ensemble). The smaller pieces round out the picture of Laitman the lyricist, whether ‘The Treasure Song’ from her opera The Three Feathers (2014) or two unexceptional violin miniatures.