Here is a beautiful song from Lionel Bart's "Oliver" and a performance of it by Caritas- Kate Potter Barrow, Kathy (my wife) and me. I suspect that it had been at least five years since the three of us had last sung this together- and we only managed to rehearse it the night before. Fortunately,
This is one of two love duets I sang with my wife, Kathy. As I say in my spoken introduction, she sang this at the end of every performance of the RTG's production of "Glorious" in which she starred as the infamous amateur singer Florence Foster Jenkins. My own history with this wonderful Cole
My 2015 voice recital was dedicated to 400 years worth of love songs. The one moment when I stepped away from that theme was when I sang a song in memory of a former voice student of mine, Nic Sluss- Rodionov, who was killed in a car accident earlier this year. This poignant masterpiece by
When it came time to introduce Beethoven's "Ich liebe dich" ("I love you") I decided to preface the performance by saying something about how a figure as stormy as Beethoven surely would have something very turbulent to say about love. But then .... violinist Ann Heide began playing what can only be described as an
I'm not sure there's a more wonderful musical than Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I" - and I wanted to include two of my favorite songs from that show on this program to highlight what I called the "unique pain" experienced by lovers whose relationship, for whatever reason, must remain clandestine. I'd never sung
Robert Schumann's "Widmung" has to be among the greatest love songs ever composed. I like to refer to it as one of the Mona Lisa's of music- one of those masterpieces that everyone needs to know and - if they possibly can - sing themselves. I give to many of my students without apology- and
I certainly couldn't sing a recital of love songs without involving my wife Kathy one way or another. She and I sang two duets, the first of which was "Do you love me" from Fiddler on the Roof. You may notice that during the dialogue beforehand I begin to get very soft. That's
This is a stunning song by the great Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886.) I vividly remember being introduced to this song back when I was in high school (37 years ago or so.) My first voice teacher, Cherie Carl, played me a recording of her own teacher, Janice Hanson- both to show me the song
Here is an excerpt from my September 13, 2015 faculty recital. This is the song with which I ended the first half: Roger Quilter's "Fair House of Joy," which is one of his Seven Elizabethan Songs. The anonymous text says that Love is one of life's most precious treasures and in no way is
Here are some excerpts from a special faculty recital - "A Glimpse of Grieg" - which I sang with my colleague Amy Haines back in the spring of 2007. It was Amy's idea to commemorate Edvard Grieg - Norway's greatest composer - in the 100th anniversary year of his death. Grieg's songs are unjustly
