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…