songful

Harper moved to New York in 1966, when he was 23, and began turning heads with the piercing and songful cry of his saxophone.

For all that techno-drama, it wound up being Mitchell who took the early, demonstrative lead in improvising — with some fluid, songful passages that added a depth of lyricism to the boisterous material for Signal.

But the sublimity of Soper’s songful material needs no great explication — just check out her setting of Yeats’s “For Anne Gregory” in “Fragments.”

The vocal writing can be declarative and songful at the same time.

The pun built into the title gets that doubleness just right: “Hymn” is a songful celebration yet also an accusation.