Peter Scott Lewis has a vivid and idiosyncratic affinity for the human voice...The San Francisco-based composer writes in a style that might be termed ‘rugged lyricism’, with vocal lines and harmonies taking unpredictable directions.

[In Where the Heart is] Lewis is skilled at setting his texts so that the meaning and imagery land with impact, and his euphonious, extended tonal language is a good fit for Sund’s idyllic celebrations...Setting his own texts, Lewis again provides artful, sophisticated sonorities [in The Changing Light], as if love opens up previously unexplored harmonic possibilities.

The music of San Francisco composer Peter Scott Lewis combines ingratiating surfaces — strong-boned tonal harmonies and melodic gracefulness — with secure structural underpinnings that keep everything logically in place. The results come through handsomely in this compilation of four song cycles of various hues and scales, all of them performed with delicacy and vigor.

The Four Cycles in this release on the Naxos label's fine American Classics series are song cycles in the classic sense, unified by a common poetic thread and musical structure. One even feels that San Francisco composer Peter Scott Lewis has the Romantic Lied tradition in mind with his lengthy introductions that set forth mood, concept, and pitch inventory for most of the songs.