This evening I heard Measha Brueggergosman give a song recital at the Jack Singer, with Roger Vignoles on piano. Her program was full of sexy, flirtatious songs by composers I hadn't considered all that sexy - Britten, Schoenberg, Bolcom - along with some Poulenc and Satie.
It wasn't until I was riding home that I realized, that was an all 20th century program, made up entirely of stuff I'd never heard before. Somehow all the songs were immediately accessible, and even the stranger ones had some charm and style. It might have been the force of Measha's personality, which seems to radiate joy and playfulness. Even in "George", a William Bolcom song about a murdered drag queen, the audience started laughing - I couldn't really figure out why, since I found the song heartbreaking, though in a somewhat ironic way.
Measha's stage presence is so powerful, you find you can't take your eyes off of her. I wanted to follow the translations of the texts, in the Schoenberg, Poulenc, and Satie songs, but I found after a while that it was much more interesting just watching her face and gestures. (Most of the texts seemed pretty silly anyway.)
The rest of the audience seemed equally enthralled - she gave two encores, a spiritual, and a silly song about someone sending unwanted flowers. Before the second, she joked about not quite having the lyrics memorized, and she actually repeated the last verse so she could get it right. I think she could have sung nonsense syllables and the audience would have still adored her.
Showing posts with label singers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label singers. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Seraphic Fire's "Sway"
Yesterday afternoon I heard Seraphic Fire, Miami's professional chamber choir, performing a concert of Baroque and contemporary music, mostly sacred and by Latin composers. At first glance they seem a lot like the New World Symphony for vocalists, with exciting programming and young singers just launching their careers. Unlike New World though, most of Seraphic Fire's members live outside the area, and they fly in for a week of rehearsals and concerts every month or so. It's a bit like the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, a group I got to play with in Boston.The program was entitled "Sway", and it gave you an idea how a Sunday afternoon in Lima, Peru in the 1690's might sound and feel (the air conditioning in the church was broken, so that possibly contributed to the atmosphere). A lot of gorgeous, soaring music came at us antiphonally from all sides, and then a secular song praising the sun, accompanied by guitar. Later in the program they featured a world premiere by Seraphic Fire member Alvaro Bermudez, and another by Sydney Guillaume, a young Haitian composer living in Miami. And they were joined by the Coral Reef High School's choir in a contemporary mass setting by Ariel Ramirez, Misa Criolla, with operatic solo tenor and baritone voices over a swaying Latin beat, accompanied by guitar, churango (a smaller guitar, like a mandolin), and bombo (a drum). Sacred or not, the music was grooving, the choir was swaying, and you almost wanted to get up and start dancing along.
Next season Seraphic Fire will be back performing in Miami Beach's Community Church, along with churches in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables, and their debut in the Carnival Center with Handel's Messiah. They'll also sing a Schubert Mass with the New World Symphony, next April at the Lincoln Theatre.
Friday, March 16, 2007
choral sympathy
Last Saturday, with the help of a bass-playing accomplice, I snuck into the Carnival Center to hear the Atlanta Symphony play the Debussy Nocturnes and Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony, conducted by Robert Spano. The concert was part of the American Choral Directors convention, which brought lots of vocalist types to Miami Beach last week. They had the hall only half filled, which was a shame since it was some fantastic playing and singing.
I had never heard the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony, and I had also never heard the Atlanta Symphony. They play it brilliantly - shifting from big, bold playing to tender accompaniment of their vocal soloists, Measha Brueggergosman and Brett Polegato. (Measha is one of my favorite singers!) The piece is a setting of these ecstatic, imagery-filled poems by Walt Whitman - here's the beginning of my favorite:
Hearing this concert surrounded by choral conventioneers, I started to think about the role of the chorus in the orchestra. It's a little bit, I imagine, like the double bass in chamber music - we don't play in that many pieces, but the ones we do have are just about the most awesome and popular. Okay, I'm thinking specifically here of Schubert's Trout Quintet, as the chamber music
analogy to Beethoven's 9th. The two pieces may not have that much to do with one another, but still I think they both represent a kind of radical expansion of the expressive possibilities of the form. And both haven't never been duplicated, and certainly not equalled in their particular structure. (Back when I was growing up in Tacoma, Washington, the local classical radio used to play the 'top 100' most requested pieces, and the Trout and the 9th were consistently the top two - not that that's any sort of conclusive measure.)
Anyway, it gave me a sort of feeling of commonality with all those choral directors I was sharing the performance with - helped along by the beautiful music and inspiring poetry. Great choral music like this always seems to arouse an incredible feeling of fellowship and common humanity, no matter who else is in the crowd - even a bunch of choral experts!
I had never heard the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony, and I had also never heard the Atlanta Symphony. They play it brilliantly - shifting from big, bold playing to tender accompaniment of their vocal soloists, Measha Brueggergosman and Brett Polegato. (Measha is one of my favorite singers!) The piece is a setting of these ecstatic, imagery-filled poems by Walt Whitman - here's the beginning of my favorite:
O vast Rondure, swimming in space,I often feel like classical singing in English sounds odd and stilted - but in this poetry it seemed to fit perfectly, and the grand expansiveness of the verses really shone forth. It didn't matter that I'm not sure what a Rondure is - everything seemed to have a much larger meaning anyway!
Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty,
Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness;
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters,
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
Now first it seems my thoughts begin to span thee.
Hearing this concert surrounded by choral conventioneers, I started to think about the role of the chorus in the orchestra. It's a little bit, I imagine, like the double bass in chamber music - we don't play in that many pieces, but the ones we do have are just about the most awesome and popular. Okay, I'm thinking specifically here of Schubert's Trout Quintet, as the chamber music
analogy to Beethoven's 9th. The two pieces may not have that much to do with one another, but still I think they both represent a kind of radical expansion of the expressive possibilities of the form. And both haven't never been duplicated, and certainly not equalled in their particular structure. (Back when I was growing up in Tacoma, Washington, the local classical radio used to play the 'top 100' most requested pieces, and the Trout and the 9th were consistently the top two - not that that's any sort of conclusive measure.)
Anyway, it gave me a sort of feeling of commonality with all those choral directors I was sharing the performance with - helped along by the beautiful music and inspiring poetry. Great choral music like this always seems to arouse an incredible feeling of fellowship and common humanity, no matter who else is in the crowd - even a bunch of choral experts!
Monday, January 08, 2007
affirmations and Thomas Hampson
Baritone Thomas Hampson was the soloist in three performances of songs from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn this weekend. He also gave a masterclass on Saturday on Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, with several brave wind players adapting the vocal lines to their instruments. These kind of cross-disciplinary master classes are something I haven't seen done anywhere else, and they have been some of the most interesting I've witnessed. Last season Barbara Bonney gave a class on Schubert lieder, and earlier this fall pianist Robert Levin coached the Mozart wind concertos.
Since instrumentalists don't normally study art songs, Hampson had plenty to teach about the phrasings, articulation, and diction a singer would bring to them. He has researched and written quite a bit about these songs and the German Romantic poets, and collected a lot of his work on his website www.hampsong.com. Each of the four Songs of a Wayfarer paints a scene in the life of a young, apparently rejected lover; he encouraged us, though, to not read them as literal descriptions but as metaphoric realizations of emotions and experiences. Just as a flower or a bird can exist on several levels, romantic love and death can mean much more than the literal acts of loving or dying.
It all left my head spinning somewhat. In the last song, "Die zwei blauen Augen", Hampson talked about these lines of text:
One of the levels of meaning Hampson talked about here was the loss of outside affirmation - the poet looks for some token sign of warmth, a farewell gesture of friendship, and there is nothing. This related this to the truth we all discover at some point, that we can't depend on friends or critics for our sense of confidence and meaning. The whole cycle can be read as a kind of death to youthful ways of being, both the joyful innocence and the painful sorrows of being naive and emotionally vulnerable. These are incredibly sad songs, and yet they hint at a way of being that is not so dependent on the outside world for affirmation, and perhaps not so prone to suffering.
As performers we get this lesson every time a review comes out in the newspaper, and we find that we can't believe the praise or the criticism. It's not just that no one ever built a statue of a critic - we can't turn the performance into a statue either, a discrete object to examine and analyze. To the extent that it is successful, it has to remain a subjective, personal experience, both for the performer and the listener.
Still, it was nice to read a complimentary review by Lawrence Johnson in today's Miami Herald. I think Thomas Hampson deserves all the praise we can give him, even if it's all ephemeral!
Since instrumentalists don't normally study art songs, Hampson had plenty to teach about the phrasings, articulation, and diction a singer would bring to them. He has researched and written quite a bit about these songs and the German Romantic poets, and collected a lot of his work on his website www.hampsong.com. Each of the four Songs of a Wayfarer paints a scene in the life of a young, apparently rejected lover; he encouraged us, though, to not read them as literal descriptions but as metaphoric realizations of emotions and experiences. Just as a flower or a bird can exist on several levels, romantic love and death can mean much more than the literal acts of loving or dying.
It all left my head spinning somewhat. In the last song, "Die zwei blauen Augen", Hampson talked about these lines of text:
Ich bin ausgegangen in stiller Nacht,
In stiller Nacht wohl uber die dunkle Haide;
Hat mir niemand Ade gesagt,
Ade, Ade!
Mein Gesell war Lieb' und Liede!
I went out in the still of night,
at dead of night across the gloomy heath.
No one said goodbye to me,
goodbye, goodbye;
my companions were love and grief.
One of the levels of meaning Hampson talked about here was the loss of outside affirmation - the poet looks for some token sign of warmth, a farewell gesture of friendship, and there is nothing. This related this to the truth we all discover at some point, that we can't depend on friends or critics for our sense of confidence and meaning. The whole cycle can be read as a kind of death to youthful ways of being, both the joyful innocence and the painful sorrows of being naive and emotionally vulnerable. These are incredibly sad songs, and yet they hint at a way of being that is not so dependent on the outside world for affirmation, and perhaps not so prone to suffering.
As performers we get this lesson every time a review comes out in the newspaper, and we find that we can't believe the praise or the criticism. It's not just that no one ever built a statue of a critic - we can't turn the performance into a statue either, a discrete object to examine and analyze. To the extent that it is successful, it has to remain a subjective, personal experience, both for the performer and the listener.
Still, it was nice to read a complimentary review by Lawrence Johnson in today's Miami Herald. I think Thomas Hampson deserves all the praise we can give him, even if it's all ephemeral!
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