latest posts
Lembit Beecher: And Then I Remember
I thought talking about living composers not yet featured on NYFOS programs would be enough to minimize the list of people I’d love to include- nope! Not the case. So I will have to let it go for now and pick up the topic another time because without a doubt, there are more composers to be talked about who excel writing for the voice- and thankfully so! Most recently, I’ve had the great joy of working on music by some well established composers but today I wanted to focus on someone relatively new on the scene with a powerfully unique ‘voice’: Lembit Beecher
Laura Kaminsky: As One
This week I wanted to look at composers not yet featured on NYFOS programs who have exceptional ‘voices’ in the contemporary realm and more specifically, ones with a natural facility writing for the voice in particular. In Laura Kaminsky’s case, her entree into the opera world would not only have tremendous impact in the classical, social and artistic scenes, but she also would introduce a subject matter so current that soon thereafter it became a cultural obsession—the experience of being transgender.
David Bruce: Bring Me Again
I wanted to mention composers whose work is moving and has a knack for unleashing and accentuating the voice’s unique powers. And when I heard the music of David Bruce, I was struck! Here was a composer who had that open channel to the heart and somehow understood how the voice could help him illuminate that. I was so struck that I went out of my way during a recording job in London to see the premiere of his opera Nothing at Glyndebourne. I walked away with the feeling that it was the best premiere I’d ever seen.
Joby Talbot: Everest
So enter Joby Talbot. For the most part, Joby hadn’t written much vocal music when I met him. Like Caroline from yesterday, he’s done some crossover work and also written for countless movies, ballets and stage pieces. His Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the first full-length narrative ballet score to be commissioned by The Royal Ballet in 20 years. Not as much for the voice when Dallas Opera commissioned him for 2015. Gene Scheer had an idea for an opera and the two of them immediately hit it off. He is a magician when it comes to word and emotion and the simplicity that often allows them to serve one another so well.
Caroline Shaw: Partita for 8 Voices
Long story short, or long story long, for this week I thought it would be nice to celebrate that love and bring to the fore a few composers with truly unique and ‘vocal’ voices that HAVEN’T yet been featured on NYFOS programs. That also helps me simplify my list since NYFOS has done so many contemporary works and premieres! 🙂 So let me start with Caroline Shaw. I can have the fan girl moment and say we went to Rice together- same class actually, back when she was just incredibly brilliant and a violinist. Now a Grammy-winner and the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer, Caroline is doing unbelievable, truly revelatory things with music.
Manhattan Transfer: How High the Moon
And now we come to Manhattan Transfer, or what we later came to refer to as just “the Transfer”. What an amazing run they had- 35 years of great tight harmony, jazz, standards and brilliant singing and smart, urbane musicianship. Just four singers, sometimes a piano or a small band. They didn’t need much accompaniment. If they are new to you, get their albums.
The Bobs: Helmet
Steve Blier flipped for their brilliant part writing and wacky take on the quirkier aspects of human frailty and eccentricity. (Just check out “Through the Wall”) . We’ve included lots of their songs on Nyfos programs over the years, and they inevitably have an immediate effect on the audience.
Take 6: We Sure Do Need Him Now
It’s Tuesday. It’s really hot this July. Tempers are flaring, folks are getting violent (though I’ve read that crime is down 50% over the past 20 years). Politics looks like some wierd version of “Survivor”. What we need is something cool and uplifting. Take 6, who emerged in the late 1980’s has always been my favorite a cappella boy band.
Lambert Hendricks and Ross: Count Bassie’s ‘Every Day I Got the Blues’
This week I want to share singing groups that I think really defined their time. I can’t do them all. The Andrews sisters sure made their mark, and captured their full share of fame, but maybe we won’t have time for them. But let’s start with Lambert Hendricks and Ross (Dave, Jon and Annie).
Theo Bleckmann: Duet for One
I heard Theo Bleckmann perform Duet For One at a Bar Mitzvah, his gift to the initiate. He is both performer and composer here; the music displays his extraordinary vocal range, not to mention stamina.
Judith Weir: King Harald’s Saga, Act I
I was twenty-three and living in Cambridge, England. My new soprano friend Amanda Dean introduced me to the music of Judith Weir through a wonderful performance of her 1979 monodrama King Harald’s Saga. “Harald” is described as a grand opera in three acts with an overall duration of slightly under ten minutes. And it’s a monodrama in the purest sense, in that the solo soprano is unaccompanied by instruments. Weir’s incisive blend of wit and drama recreates the foolhardy expedition of a Norwegian king to conquer England.
Burke/Webster: Black Coffee
“Love’s a hand-me-down brew” in these blues. Who would spurn Peggy Lee when she sings so languorously? Born Norma Deloris Egstrom in North Dakota, Peggy Lee had a voice that to me could do just about anything. But be sexy. At least to me.
Rachmaninoff: Daisies
Okay, perhaps on another beautiful day in Berkshires I shouldn’t wave goodbye so quickly to summer. Igor Severyanin’s poem beholds daisies in perfect summer bloom, and Rachmaninoff doesn’t hold back.
Schumann: Des Sennen Abschied
This week I am in the Berkshires, preparing for a performance at Tanglewood of my Variations on a Summer Day, songs which in part were previewed on the NYFOS Next series two years ago. Songs about summer, and about mountains, spring to mind. I am numbering these days of perfection, sad for them to end but already making plans for the fall. Over and again I am hearing Robert Schumann’s song Des Sennen Abschied, to Friedrich Schiller’s poem, their farewell to the willows and wells of water and flowers of the season.
Kurt Weill: Muschel von Margate
I met Cyndia Sieden outside her voice lesson at Marlena Malas’s studio in 1982. She was a breath of fresh air—guileless and smart, an unbeatable combo. We seemed to fall into one another’s confidence instantly. I was fascinated by her name, which happens to be the same as that of a character in Massenet’s opera “Le roi de Lahore.” Only…it’s the baritone role. I pulled the LPs off Marlena’s shelf to show Cyndia, and the sight of her name attached to a picture of a glowering, mustachioed Sherrill Milnes made us laugh like kids.