We’ve had some rainy weather recently, but the last couple days have been just beautiful. I’ve been enjoying the outdoors and having the windows open while indoors. Taxes are now out of the way, and we’re entering the last week of classes at JMU, so I’m looking forward to a slightly slower pace over the summer.
I’ll be in Princeton next weekend (April 26) for a concert with some friends from college, and the following weekend (May 3), I’ll be singing a performance of “Camp Songs” by Paul Schoenfield in Richmond, VA. The latter is an extraordinary set for mezzo and baritone, clarinet, violin, cello, bass and piano, premiered in 2002. It’s not easy at all, but it sounds very jazzy to my ears, and quite evocative. We’ve got a great group of performers, and I hope we’ll get to repeat this somewhere.
This summer, I’ll be stopping in to sing at the Shenandoah Bach Festival, and later, essentially making my professional conducting debut for a summer musical theater production of Wizard of Oz in Luray. I’ll post more info as the time approaches.
I’ve been remiss at keeping this updated, but I’m headed to Philly shortly for another concert with Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra. This one will be a first for me in several ways.
For one, I’ve never been a participant in a puppet opera before.
Secondly, it will be the first time I’ve sung the role of Testo (the narrator) in Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. In fact, the role is often sung by tenors. However, the written notes span roughly from middle C to a baritone high G, so it still fits nicely within my range. It will require some stamina, though. The piece lasts about 20 minutes, and I sing for most of that time.
It will be nice to be back in Philly, where I really began my career. (I grew up across the river in Cherry Hill.) It will be especially nice to stay again in South Philly by the Italian market! It’s changed a lot from what I remember in my teenage years, but I eagerly await the great Chinese food that is now in the neighborhood, and I’ll still look forward to clogging my arteries with some Tastyklairs.
Performances are March 7, 8, and 9 at the Plays and Players Theater on Delancy. See website (above) for more details. Come hear me spit out Italian at 100 miles an hour! The concert also features Aaron Sheehan as Tancredi and Marguerite Krull as Clorinda.
Also worth noting that I’ll be singing Bach Cantatas 182 and 31 with The Bach Choir of Bethlehem the following weekend. People come from all over the country to see these performances, so it’s definitely worth a trip if you’re nearby. Other soloists include Laurie Heimes, Leslie Johnson and Stephen Ng.
I’m excited about my next performance with Bach Sinfonia, which happens this Saturday, October 20.
I’ve performed with this group several times, and I was the bass soloist for their recent Dorian release of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast. While that was a rather small role, this concert features me rather prominently in two of my favorite cantatas.
One is quite well known: Bach’s Cantata 82 Ich habe genug is a beautiful solo cantata for bass, with a prominent oboe obbligato.
The other is lesser known: Handel’s Apollo e Dafne isn’t performed all that much, perhaps because of its unusually difficult writing for Apollo. However, it is a brilliant work with some extraordinarily beautiful moments.
I’ve performed both of these works before, but I’ve been revisiting them both this week, especially since we only have two days of rehearsals to put this program together.
This brings to light an interesting note about the Handel. It is a normal part of my research to listen to several different recordings of a piece I am going to sing. I was only able to locate three recordings of the Handel. The Naxos recording is basically unlistenable, and I was decidedly unimpressed with several aspects of the Chandos recording. The best of the three was the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra recording with McGegan conducting. On that one, David Thomas is the bass, and the soprano is Judith Nelson. (She was also the soprano with whom I last sang this work.) Nevertheless, there seems to be room in the marketplace for a truly high quality recording of this work, and I would dearly like to be on it!
I’m looking forward to singing with Jennifer Ellis Kampani again, even though we’ve seen an awful lot of each other over the past year. (The recording we made of “Le Tournoi de Chauvency” has apparently been released already in France. I’m still waiting to hear it, and I’m disappointed that our names aren’t more prominent on the packaging.) Which reminds me, I need to put up some pictures here from the stage production…
At about the same time as I changed this website, I finally followed a dream I’ve had for about a decade of starting a free archive of sheet music on the Internet. Of course, there are quite a few such archives already in existence, but I’ve found none that really serve the needs of the singer, especially students who are just learning the standard repertoire.
Thus, Art Song Central was born.
It will host a large number of songs from the standard repertoire, scanned from quality editions and placed in PDF form. It will also link to songs which are currently offered in printable form from other archives. Each song post will also link to various supporting resources, when available, including MP3 and MIDI files, the full text of the song, and biographical information on the composer and author.
Obviously, the site is still in its infancy, but I should be able to quadruple the current number of song entries by the end of next week.
Finally, I expect that site to end up as the main repository of materials that I develop for my voice students. I’ve got several essays in mind that are just waiting for me to take the time to phrase them eloquently! 