• Home
  • About
    • Chloe Veltman
    • lies like truth
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

lies like truth

Chloe Veltman: how culture will save the world

White Men Can’t Sing

white.jpegIt’s a common assumption that if you’re a truly great singer, you can sing most anything. But this assumption of course is false. There are amazing lyrical tenors who can’t do Wagner. And incredible jazz singers who can’t sing folk music. For many experts, fach is everything and knowing your parameters as a vocalist is the best way to become excellent.

In the world of choral singing, however, some groups have earned a reputation for being able to sing in practically any style. The King’s Singers is one such group.

But at last night’s concert at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, the six-song, all male, a cappella showed that some musical styles may not fit them as well as others. The group breezed beautifully through a bunch of Italian and English madrigals by Schutz, Monteverdi, Weelkes and Bennet, and brought lushness and warmth to a performance of Saint-Saens’ Saltarelle.

But the King’s Singers’ performance of Berkeley composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s Tres Mitros de Mi Tierra (a commissioned world premiere) reminded me of hearing the Trinity College Choir from Cambridge, England, attempting gospel music at a concert at Grace Cathedral last summer. They just sounded stiff and “trained” — they couldn’t get under the skin of the music at all.

The same thing happened to the King’s Singers at last night’s concert: No matter how much accuracy and dexterity the vocalists brought to Frank’s rhythmically complex, mystical three-movement piece about three mythical Peruvian characters, they just couldn’t quite get into the swing of it. I guess these particular Brits (or maybe Anglo-Saxons in general?) are just too buttoned up to really communicate this ethnic kind of music. The piece, which offsets beautiful, delicate moments with a strident Latino pulse felt mostly quite stiff and formal.

I wonder if it would have sounded more supple if sung by a group more comfortable with Latino and/or folk idioms?

PS lies like truth is going on hiatus for a few days owing to travel plans. Look out for a new post next Wednesday.

lies like truth

These days, it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fantasy. As Alan Bennett's doollally headmaster in Forty Years On astutely puts it, "What is truth and what is fable? Where is Ruth and where is Mabel?" It is one of the main tasks of this blog to celebrate the confusion through thinking about art and perhaps, on occasion, attempt to unpick the knot. [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

  • About Last Night
  • Artful Manager
  • Audience Wanted
  • Bitter Lemons
  • blog riley
  • Clyde Fitch Report
  • Cool As Hell Theatre
  • Cultural Weekly
  • Dewey 21C
  • diacritical
  • Did He Like It?
  • Engaging Matters
  • Guardian Theatre Blog
  • Independent Theater Bloggers Association
  • Josh Kornbluth
  • Jumper
  • Lies Like Truth
  • Life's a Pitch
  • Mind the Gap
  • New Beans
  • Oakland Theater Examiner
  • Producer's Perspective
  • Real Clear Arts
  • San Francisco Classical Voice
  • Speaker
  • State of the Art
  • Straight Up
  • Superfluities
  • Texas, a Concept
  • Theater Dogs
  • Theatre Bay Area's Chatterbox
  • Theatreforte
  • Thompson's Bank of Communicable Desire
Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license