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.
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:
