I like jazz choirs and 80s music, too

Courtesy of my friend, Bill:

Please wach this video of a Slovenian jazz choir called Perpetuum Jazzile performing Toto's "Africa." The thunderstorm effects are the best part.

I don't know how to embed a video yet, particularly one yanked from YouTube. Anyone care to enlighten me?

In the meantime, if you want to know what has actually been inspiring me lately, listen to Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson's recordings of Mahler's Ruckert Lieder. Here's "Um Mitternacht" and here are three more from that album. The last one, "Liebst du um Schonheit," is one of the most beautiful love songs I know. We had Clara Schumann's setting of the same poetry sung at our wedding - I still can't decide which I like more, Clara Schumann's or Mahler's. What say you?

Opera Bob!

This summer, our musical adventures have mostly taken place with a new opera company in Minneapolis called Opera Bob! Yes, it's a weird name for an opera company, but the name is meant to reflect the company's goal to be a more accessible, less formal presenter of opera in the community.

Opera Bob was brought into existence to fill a void in our community: we have one major regional opera company here, The Minnesota Opera, but despite the many theater companies in the Twin Cities, The Minnesota Opera is the only opera company. There are one or two theaters in town that occasionally present an opera, and a few that present musical theater, but in a town full of small, independent theater companies and a community eager to patronize them, Opera Bob's founders thought that there exists a potential audience for independent opera that emphasizes the drama and the music as equal parts of the art form. So many people belive that opera singers are bad actors or that opera is melodramatic and cheesy (and sometimes, those things may be true!), but good opera as an art form doesn't emphasize the music at the expense of the drama - these elements go hand in hand. In good opera, the music serves the drama, and great composers throughout the centuries knew how to take even mediocre poetry and turn it into compelling theater. And that is what Opera Bob hopes to do: perform compelling theater by great composers.

Actually, you can read Opera Bob's mission statement here, on the website. (The website isn't professional-looking yet, but we are getting there!) There are so many neglected, rarely-performed gems by great composers, and this is where Opera Bob hopes to carve a niche in this city.

So, this summer, Chandler and I have been performing in fundraisers for Opera Bob, helping to raise the funds to underwrite our very first show at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in August. All the singers are emerging professionals (you can read the biographies on the Opera Bob website) who are helping raise funds (donate at the website - it's tax deductible!) because we are really excited about this new company. Our Fringe Festival show is actually five scenes from five different operas by four different composers that hang together on a common theme. We decided not to do a full opera, since we are limited by the Fringe to a presentation under 50 minutes, but I think these five scenes are going to hold together really well and give our audiences a taste of some fantastic drama!

I'll be back later to tell you more about our show!

Apologies, update, and onward

Hello family and friends, if any of you are out there, my apologies for the six-month absence. The winter turned out to be a fairly depressing time in my singing career, and as the winter itself is fairly depressing for me, I couldn't bring myself to post. Now that the sun is shining and I've had a number of requests to continue, here I am again!

I'll skip the winter disappointments and talk about the good things, okay?

HANDEL'S MESSIAH: I was asked to sing the soprano solos in Messiah, Handel's most famous oratorio, with the Sioux County Oratorio Society, back in May. I was actually very excited for this, as I haven't ever sung a Messiah in concert with full chorus and orchestra! Actually, although I have done some concert work, I've never done any oratorio!

For any of my family and friends who aren't clear about the definition of oratorio, here it is: An oratorio consists of solos, recitatives, and chorus and is performed with an orchestra, much like an opera, and it has a story and characters, but it is not staged, nor are there costumes or a set. Therefore, it isn't really a dramatic theatrical work like opera. There is very little (if any) interaction between the characters - the soloists basically just stand in front of the orchestra and sing. Many oratorios are based on sacred topics, such as the life of Jesus or other Biblical figures, but some are secular, often based on stories from Greek and Roman mythology.

So, oratorio is very different from opera from a performer's perspective: while you are singing a character, you are basically creating that character in each piece you sing like you would in a song recital, because you don't interact with the others. In Handel's Messiah, there aren't really characters at all, just narration from different Biblical texts by the four soloists. I thoroughly enjoyed singing the soprano solos in Handel's Messiah because it is such a popular, well-known and beloved musical work - although it is quite long, most of the audience knows it well from recordings and other performances. Oh, and the music is beautiful! Well, and the other soloists were great to listen to, particularly the alto and the tenor, who added very nice ornamentations. It is expected in Baroque music to add stylistically appropriate ornamentations, and the tenor was exceptionally skilled at this. Totally fun to hear!

Handel's Messiah is usually performed during Advent, but it is also performed occasionally during Lent. This performance took place right after Easter, but before Ascension Day, which I actually thought was the most appropriate of all, since the three parts of the work are 1) The Birth of Christ, 2) The Passion of Christ, and 3) The Aftermath. The performance I took part in was a shortened version of the work (the entire work is three hours long!), but took pieces from all three sections. I was a little bummed out that one of the pieces that was cut was the soprano aria "I know that my Redeemer liveth," but at least one aria was cut for every soloist. I wonder if the audience was disappointed if they noticed any of their favorite pieces had been excluded? The "Hallelujah" chorus was there, of course, so maybe nobody minded about anything else.

Maybe you are one of the few who don't have a good recording of this massively popular oratorio, and you would like to buy a good one, hm? Well, here are some recommendations:

London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Sir Colin Davis

The English Concert and Choir, conducted by Trevor Pinnock

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Robert Shaw

So there you have it. I'm catching up! More tomorrow on my newest opera adventure - Opera Bob! (Seriously, that is the company's name. Come back tomorrow!)