What fun it’s been to host this week and ponder my favorite songs and performances! For my last day, I thought I’d look back to one of my earliest singer memories, one of the first pieces to leave a huge impression on me as a singer, and the first piece that got me hooked on early music. My big solo senior year of high school was Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa. There’s so much to love about this piece.
Read MoreWhat do you know, I’m finally featuring a non-mezzo! As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, pianist Alden Gatt and I decided to pair John Harbison’s Mirabai Songs with Schumann’s Frauenliebe und leben for our recent Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert. We liked the idea of providing a contrast with the very traditional woman’s role depicted in the Schumann, and we also wanted to feature the words of a woman poet herself (not just the words of a fictional female character).
Read MoreI have to feature the work that loomed largest for me this year, Robert Schumann’s iconic Frauenliebe und leben. I finally learned it all and performed it after years of wanting to do so but never finding the time or the right venue to make myself just do it. The right time turned out to be my April recital for Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Concerts series which I performed with Alden Gatt, a wonderful pianist and friend of mine.
Read MoreI love that music can have the power to transport you to a place and put you right inside of a memory. There are certain pieces of music that I experienced in such a powerful way the first time I heard them that they bring back an incredibly strong emotional and visceral memory whenever I hear them again. “Baïlèro” from Chants d’Auvergne is one of those pieces.
Read MoreWith today’s selection I’d like to pay homage to two of my favorite things: a favorite composer and a favorite singer who combine in the most wonderful way on this track.
Read MoreI was introduced to it when soprano Candice Hoyes unearthed a whole album’s worth of Ellington rarities for her debut album, On a Turquoise Cloud, in 2015. This track, “Heaven,” is from Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, which the composer called “the most important thing I’ve ever done.” It premiered right here in New York in 1968 at St. John the Divine Church, but no recording of this has surfaced. It’s hard to believe this Harlem gem was little known, but it’s very exciting that a singer of my generation has chosen to interpret it!
Read MoreI’ve just got to feature a piece I’m obsessed with, not a “song” per se, but an opera duet, one of my favorite moments in all of opera, one that I occasionally find myself listening to over and over again because I can’t get enough of it: “Mira, o Norma” from Bellini’s Norma. I love bel canto opera to […]
Read MoreA composer that loomed large in my childhood, and one I’d love to introduce to those of you who may not have heard of him, is Al Carmines. He was a key figure in the Off-Off-Broadway scene of the 60s — as Associate Minister of Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, he helped found Judson […]
Read MoreOf course I have to feature my #1 favorite singer, Teresa Berganza! Although she is absolutely stunning on any repertoire, when she sings Spanish music it is just perfection. One of the song cycles that I love the most (both to sing and to hear), one which Berganza performed better than anyone, is Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones […]
Read More…this particular song – it just gives me the chills every time I hear it. It’s the captivating melody, the serenity, the orchestration with the utterly human English horn and the etherial harp, and most of all, it’s the heart-wrenching dissonances. The music alone is enough to break your heart, but Friedrich Rückert’s poem takes it over the edge, and Mahler couldn’t have set it more perfectly.
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