Baptism is an intriguing collection of poetry and prose sung and spoken by Miss Baez. It is also an intensely personal vision communicated through a legacy of shared insights spanning several centuries. Vanguard's Maynard Solomon has compiled 17 selections from early and modern poets of Europe, Asia and America, including poems by William Blake, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jacques Prevert and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Together with an old Welsh song and a Negro lullaby, the collection has a remarkable unity and striking impact. The net result is a fascinating, if disparaging, journey through our time.

The concept of such an album is not new, yet its compilation and flawless execution create an immediate excitement. The listener feels comfortable, as though hearing piano and orchestra progress through the predictable movements of a concerto. Yet the performance is obviously the product of studied innovation perfectly suited to the evolution of a gifted performer.

Joan Baez has long been an artist whose superlative voice and virtuosity as a folk singer are unequalled. But while brilliant vocal artistry has enabled her to fully explore the folk idiom, the impulse to evolve in directions away from the folk genre have created uncertainties. Judy Collins dealt with a similar predicament by recording several albums in rather quick succession, each widely varying in style and quality.

By contrast Miss Baez has moved more confidently and with greater continuity from straight folk to an exceptionally good Christmas album (Noel), then to a second and fully orchestrated recording (Joan), and now to a dramatic reading. As is quickly evident, her new role becomes her.

Side One is a magnificent and impassioned out-cry against the ravages of war, violence and the insanity of spilled blood. In a pure, prose voice, Miss Baez evokes the indignity and horror in the pleas of those who protest to the dynastic Chinese minister of War. In Jacques Prevert's "Song In The Blood," she intones the rhythmic cycle of spilled blood and death as the earth turns with immutable regularity. She is truly a woman who has seen too much slaughter, her voice sounding detached, matter-of-fact, foretelling only blood and more death.

Blake's "London" and Norman Rosten's "In Guernica" on the same side are provocative and very effective, the net effect being an uncompromising and brutal vision of war and death evoked by a gentle woman's voice and orchestration in a somber, minor key.

Side Two is clearly a spiritual chronology revealing the multiple baptisms accompanying the loss of innocence. The happy nonsense of the opening passages of Joyce's "Portrait Of the Artist As A Young Man" are supplanted by the sinister fantasies of Rimbaud, the desperate hope of love in Yevtushenko's "Colours," and finally, lamentation and grief.

Taken as a whole, the album is a very personal statement about the nature of man and the ghastly paradoxes of life and death. While some passages are very moving and beautiful Baptism is inescapably depressing. Ideally the album's continuity would have been better preserved had a large portion of the war poems on Side One been preceded by the innocence of childhood. But this shortcoming may be academic. (RS 19)

JOHN GRISSIM