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Alicia Hall Moran: Heavy Blue
Buy this record. Again, through my incredible work as Director of Artistic Planning at National Sawdust, I have been fortunate to meet new artists. Alicia was our Artist in Residence last year and she launched this powerful record as a starting point for her residency. This entire album inspires me to get up in the morning, go to work, and find ways to support artists, every day. Thank you Alicia!
Franz Schubert: Gute Nacht
Winterreise is an epic song cycle that has been recorded, discussed and performed millions of times. There is a reason why. However, this particular singer and his work with William Kentridge served a catalyst for me as a programmer to dare to hear standard repertoire with a visual lens.
Paola Prestini: Union
As a “recovering” opera singer myself, I am immediately drawn to Paola Prestini’s incredible capacity to write gorgeous music for singers. Through getting to know her through our work together at VisionIntoArt and National Sawdust* where we commissioned over 10 world premieres and umpteen artists together since 2012, I now know her incredible capacity to write beautiful music is a simple extension of her beautiful spirit.
Lou Reed: Perfect Day (sung by Helga Davis)
I first heard Helga at Philip Glass/Robert Wilson’s “Einstein on The Beach” during BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 2012. I didn’t know her personally and was incredibly fortunate to meet her a few months later. Helga is a beacon and this song captures her incredible artistry and vocal intensity.
Richard Strauss: September
The garden is mourning,
the rain sinks coolly into the flowers.
Summer shudders
as it meets its end.
Michel Legrand: You Must Believe in Spring (Tony Bennet and Bill Evans)
Today is definitively the first day of autumn. I cannot ignore the fact that the days are shorter, that deadlines are growing tighter, and that I never seem to have enough time to get everything done. My mood must have something to do with this endless election, which is like a 29-month pregnancy—at the end of which you might be giving birth to a monster. On days like this I need a re-set button. Bill Evans and Tony Bennett come to the rescue with a song I find very reassuring at this time of year: “You Must Believe in Spring.”
Frank Bridge: Goldenhair
My teaching week has mixed coaching sessions with auditions for the January NYFOS@Juilliard show: an all-British program called “From Lute Song to the Beatles.” I had asked the students to bring in English song, suggesting they they might offer one art song in tandem with either an operetta aria or a popular song. It’s only Tuesday and I’ve already heard Finzi, Quilter, Britten, John Ireland, and Purcell—
Sergei Taneyev: The Restless Heart Is Beating
My Tchaikovsky concert isn’t till early next year, but I want to get it squared away now before the autumn hits me like a ton of bricks. Having decided to include a little group of songs by Tchaik’s teachers and students, I received some expert guidance from Antonina Chehovska, the soprano soloist for the project. She had wonderful ideas for Rubenstein, Arensky, and Taneyev, and I appreciated her promptness and her enthusiasm.
Adam Guettel: Awaiting You
“Awaiting You” has all the Adam trademarks—a gorgeous harmonic progression, a lyric that provokes and stimulates, and a white-hot opulence that never fails to conquer me. Here is the unbridled Billy Porter, who gave the first performances of the song.
Puccini: “No, pazzo son” from Manon Lescaut, sung by Beniamino Gigli
I spent three hours of my day today listening to my fellow young artists here in LA sing arias for each other, with feedback from our fearless leader Josh Winograde, who’s job is the hiring of singers. These sessions are a chance for us to get up, sing something that may be a total work in progress, and work through our challenges. One thing that Josh says time and time again is to “give us what we want.” I think this is so poignant, and a topic of much debate among modern musicians.
Benjamin Britten: Songs and Proverbs of William Blake
One of the pieces of music that has haunted my mind (and by that I mean made my imagination run wild) since I was first exposed to it is Britten’s “Songs and Proverbs of William Blake”. Written in 1965 for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the piece serves as a meditation on the state of the world and the frailty of man in Britten’s day and Blake’s, about 200 years prior to the work’s composition.
Giuseppe Verdi: The Sleepwalking Scene from “Macbeth”
If I felt strange and out of place in the rehearsal room, my discomforts were quelled when we got into the theater. It turns out Verdi didn’t write Macbeth for a rehearsal room, and it is certainly something exhilarating to be onstage in a gorgeous 3000+ seat house hearing these singers do what they do (and doing a bit of it myself), learning from the dark, majestic sect of this art form called Verdi. Here for your listening pleasure is Maria Callas singing Lady Macbeth’s final grand scena, the Sleepwalking Scene, from Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth.
Stephen Sondheim: “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods
To conclude the week, I offer you one of my favorite songs about children, “Children Will Listen” from Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Even before I had my own little one, the message of this song always went straight to my heart. Such a beautiful way to be reminded of our power and responsibility towards the next generation, here sung by the song’s originator, Bernadette Peters.
Mozart: “Pa Pa Pa Pa” from The Magic Flute
And now for some parent-related frivolity courtesy of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. This duet makes having lots of little ones running around sound like nothing but fun, but I’d love to hear another version of this ten years down the line once all of those little Papagenos and Papagenas have their parents busy! This recording features Bryn Terfel and Miah Persson.
Schubert: Erlkönig
Being a parent opens the door to a whole new set of fears, which makes this already frightening song downright terrifying. I clearly remember the first time that I heard Schubert’s “Erlkönig” in a German diction class twenty years ago and being completely riveted. Here to bring us this miniature masterpiece is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.