Today I finished a 3-performance run of Rachmaninoff’s “All-Night Vigil” with Cappella Romana in Portland and Seattle. What an adventure! It was my first time to perform the entire work, and also my first time to perform the beautiful (and deathly challenging) tenor solos. As I sit at home and recover, I think, “I am so tired!…Wow, that was beautiful!…It’s like a massage for my ears….I’m so happy I did that.”
Alas, life moves forward. After spending December with lots of Handel’s Messiah and various other performances, and then these Rachmaninoff concerts, I hardly have time to relax before the next project. Up next is excerpts from “Madame Butterfly” by Puccini with Portland Opera. (How’s that for “something completely different?”)
I’m honored to be performing preview performances with the Portland Opera Studio Artists in preparation for the company’s mainstage production of “Butterfly.” This will be my first time singing Pinkerton (the tenor role in this opera), and it is some welcome new territory in my repertoire.
We will perform the previews 3 times, at libraries in Salem (1/28), Portland (1/29), and Lake Oswego (2/6). More info on my “Performances” page.
I’m enjoying spending this week and weekend in Walla Walla, Washington performing with the Walla Walla Symphony. I’m performing with frequent collaborator conductor Yaakov Bergman and great soloists and new friends Beth Madsen Bradford, Charles Robert Stephens, and Sarah Parnicky. We performed a recital of opera and musical theater hits on Thursday night, and tomorrow we’ll be celebrating Christmas with Handel’s Messiah.
I’m really excited to participate as a musician and actor with this upcoming show from “Dreams Landing.” The show is a collaboration with Playback Theater. It is a mixture of theater, dance, music, and spoken word drawn from collected dreams that were submitted.
I ran across this quote in a book about painter Jackson Pollock I was reading this morning:
“One day, curious about his wife’s opinion of a picture, he did not ask whether she thought it was a good painting or a bad one. He simply asked, ‘Is this a painting?’”
My voice teacher Kathy Kaun used to say to us, “Think about WHAT you are doing, not HOW you are doing.”
My friend Steph shared this video with me this week. It’s a TED talk by British acting teacher Patsy Rodenburg. She tells an incredible story about an actress who was “present” to the story so much that is made people dislike her. Is seems like the actress wasn’t asking, “Am I doing well?”, she was asking “Is this a story?”
I was SO happy to discover this newly-posted TED talk today from Scottish conductor Charles Hazlewood. So many wonderful ideas, beautiful ways of describing the music-making process, and the power that music has in our lives. A couple thoughts that come to mind for me:
*Having been to South Africa, I can relate so much to what he says about the musical spirit of this amazing country. Music is in the blood of the South African people, and they can hear and respond SO quickly, and improvise immediately. Ahhhh, it makes me want to go back there right now!
*I love what this conductor is doing with his ParaOrchestra. Music is so special and healing, and bravo to him for finding ways to include all in the art.
*As a performer, I wish every conductor could hear him talk about TRUST. So often I feel conductors don’t trust themselves or the ensembles they are conducting. The result is a crazy windmill effect and very little return musically. (Not EVERY conductor, of course. There are some wonderful exceptions!)
I wanted to post just two more things about my trip to Greece with Cappella Romana earlier this month.
First, I made a video with some of the highlights of our trip. Included in the video are clips of the scenery, our concerts, recordings, and also some Greek folk dancing. Enjoy!
Secondly, our group was featured on the Greek national news! This video is the story from the news show. It’s in Greek, but you’ll get the idea. Basically, “there’s a music festival in Patmos, and this group from the USA was singing at it.”
A year ago, I spent an amazing two weeks with tour-de-force choir Conspirare performing and recording a collection of African-American Spirituals. It was an incredible journey delving into this powerful and meaningful music. Without a doubt, each of us that sang these concerts and recordings left changed. We all experienced an extraordinary connection while making music together.
So it is with great excitement that I announce this CD’s release! Sing Freedom! African American Spirituals was released this month. You can purchase the CD and hear some of the tracks here. It is also available on Amazon and iTunes.
I can’t encourage you enough to take a listen to this CD. It is undoubtedly one of the artistic highlights of my career so far.
(The other exciting news is that Conspirare will be repeating this process for the next 2 weeks in Austin and Goshen. This time, we will be recording the choral music of Samuel Barber. More info to come!)
