It’s too bad that there are so many good concerts today, because the one that’s all new music will likely get the smallest audience.

Bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch, one of the world’s “barihunks,” made a name for himself in the premiere productions of Howard Shore’s The Fly.

He makes his Toronto début and launches a new vocal recital series curated by Roy Thomson Hall at the Glenn Gould Studio today at 2 p.m. Details here.

The program comes from his The New American Art Song album (recorded 10 years ago), which inludes cycles by contemporary composers: Songs from the Underground, by Glen Roven; Quiet Lives, by Ricky Ian Gordon; Of Gods and Cats, by Jake Heggie; and Night Songs, by Lowell Liebermann.

Both composers come from a tonal aesthetic, which makes their music much easier to approach.

Here’s a Okulitch in a section from Mark Adamo’s operatic Little Women, followed by a sample of Liebermann’s work, a Trio, performed by pianist Erh Jen Lee, violinist Solomia Gorokhivska and Genevieve Norton on cello:

http://youtu.be/U83LlozWONY

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John Terauds

John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in 1988, was the classical music critic from 2005 to 2012, and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.

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