For a young singer, the world is all about faith: that a coach will provide the right advice; that a concert presenter or opera producer will take a chance; that they themselves can stretch and grow with each new task.
To this, we can add Geoffrey Sirett’s faith that people who order his new CD online will pay up the $15 once they receive it in the mail.
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The Toronto-based baritone, still fresh from a Masters degree from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, graduated with a scholarship that provided for a début recording, to be used as an international calling card.
Sirett’s effort, Vagabond, is far better than that. The 72-and-a-half minutes of English and Canadian art song showcase a gorgeous, rich voice coming into bloom. This is the powerful sound of an operatic contender, one that Sirett manages to tame into a golden vehicle for the expressive nuances of art song.
On Sunday afternoon at Walter Hall, Sirett joins three other young singers — soprano Leslie Ann Bradley, mezzo Erica Iris Huang and tenor Graham Thomson — as well as Aldeburgh Connection co-artistic directors (and piano accompanists) Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata in an art song feast built around the music of Franz Schubert.
Ralls and Ubukata write this about the concert:
Outside the town of Želiezovce (once known as Zselíz), on the border of Slovakia and Hungary, lie a decayed park and palace which belonged to a branch of the Esterházy family. Here Schubert stayed in the summer of 1818 as music tutor to the two daughters of Count Johann. Again in 1824, he repeated his visit – this time to become warmly attached to the elder daughter, Caroline. Presenting the extraordinarily beautiful music written for the lucky family, and in particular for Caroline, this concert constitutes our annual Greta Kraus Schubertiad.
For ticket information, click here.
All the songs on Vagabond are in English, starting off with the dramatic verve of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ nine Songs of Travel. They have been sung and recorded often by the world’s best, and Sirett’s effort is far better than average for a young singer.
Even finer are Six Songs from ‘A Shropshire Lad’ by George Butterworth and five of Benjamin Britten’s harmonically haunted folksong settings.
Ralls is an ideal accompanist throughout, finding the right balance between equal partnership and discretion, neatly underpinning the singer’s efforts.
The Canadian songs work as bridges between the English works. The first, commissioned by Sirett from fellow University of Toronto student Ivan Barbotin, is a setting of “She Rested,” a tenth poem from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel. It is a nicely atmospheric piece, with a moody accompaniment for piano quintet.
Vancouver-based composer Jocelyn Morlock contributes Involuntary Love Songs, a 2008 setting of three gorgeous poems by Alan Ashton — “Thaw,” “Matches” and “Script” — that are a treat as music, as well as in Sirett’s interpretation. They also nicely match up with Britten’s sensibility.
You can find out more about Sirett, listen to audio samples and order the CD at his website, here.
Coming up for him are performances with the Buffalo Philharmonic and a planned May performance in Toronto of a complete version of From the House of Mirth, a new opera by Rodney Sharman.
Sirett is spending his third summer at the music festival in Aspen, and will also be joining Ralls and Ubukata at their Bayfield festival on Georgian Bay.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
