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‘Glitter and Be Gay.’ I can never get enough of his music. He
challenges singers—pushes us to use our heads, our intellects
as well as our raw talent. His music sticks with you. It’s some-
thing you can’t forget.” e RSMI alumna and winner of the
Met’s
Beverly Sills Artist Award will devote her August
Martin eatre concert with tenor Michael Fabiano and Mur-
phy on piano to the songs of “Bernstein and Friends.”
Two weeks later (and one day before the actual
th birth-
day of Bernstein), Sierra’s debut solo album,
ere’s a Place for
Us
, will be released by Deutsche Grammophon/Decca Gold,
the rst product of an exclusive recording deal she signed with
the sister labels last year. e title is borrowed from the lyrics
of its rst track, “Somewhere” from
West Side Story
, to empha-
size the disc’s underlying theme. “I wanted to send a message
of positivity, uni cation, acceptance of all people, no matter
what race, sexuality, religion—no matter what anything,” says
Sierra. “I feel deep down that we can make a change in the
right direction, and that the right direction is about uniting
people.” She adds that her choice of “Somewhere” speaks
directly to the immigrant experience while reinforcing hopes
that peace will prevail over con ict.
A
mong Bernstein’s works
for voice and
piano is
Le Bonne Cuisine
, four th-century French
recipes (plum pudding, oxtail soup, a Turkish pastry,
and rabbit stew) set to music by Bernstein in
.
e ve-minute piece is more of what we think of as traditional
Bernstein. “It’s fun to explore Bernstein’s songwriting because
you can see where he’s going later with his theater music,” says
Murphy. “But I do think it’s both curious and interesting that he
didn’t write many art songs for piano and voice. He was such an
amazing accompanist—he played countless recitals with singers,
and he recorded a good deal of lieder.”
Twenty-nine years a er he’d explored French cuisine,
Bernstein composed a much more serious song cycle.
Songfest
premiered in
on an all-Bernstein program by the National
Symphony Orchestra.
Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for
Six Singers and Orchestra
consists of songs on texts by poets
as diverse as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Langston Hughes, and
Edna St. Vincent Millay. Of all the poems, Bernstein’s favor-
ite was Millay’s sonnet “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed”: “I
cannot say what loves have come and gone, / I only know what
summer sang in me / A little while, that in me sings no more.”
Another of its songs, “A Julia de Burgos,” which sets verse
by the titular Puerto Rican poet and civil rights activist, is one
of four Bernstein songs on Sierra’s forthcoming album as well
as one of the soprano’s favorite concert features. “With every
recital I do, I always try to incorporate Portuguese, Brazilian,
or Spanish songs in order to share a bit of my heritage and
personal story with the audience,” Sierra told
Playbill
before a
pair of programs at New York’s Park Avenue Armory. “ ‘A Julia
de Burgos’ is [… an] exceptional and ever-delightful take on
Latin music […] so what better way to celebrate the brilliance
of Bernstein?”
While
Songfest
was written for a full orchestra (a chamber
orchestra version was premiered at Ravinia in
), it can be
performed with piano. Last January’s RSMI Singers alumni
tour featured performances of selections from the work along
with
Psalm
and Bernstein’s
Two Love Songs
, settings of
verse by Rainer Maria Rilke. at program also o ered a slice
of his theatrical music, including “I Go On” from
Mass
and
selections from
West Side Story
,
Trouble in Tahiti
, and
Candide
.
But the program didn’t feature just voices and piano, as indeed
RSMI’s upcoming performances of the complete songs won’t.
“ ere’s a song in
Songfest
called ‘To What You Said,’ which
has a cello obbligato. It’s just so touching and beautiful,” says
Murphy about the highlight. “To What You Said” is a setting by
Walt Whitman in which the poet confesses his long-concealed
love for another man. e poem was never published during
Whitman’s lifetime.
Bernstein died on Sunday, October ,
. Placed beside
him in the co n was the score to Mahler’s Fi h Symphony, a
conductor’s baton, and a copy of
Alice in Wonderland.
Chore-
ographer and Bernstein collaborator Jerome Robbins wrote,
“Here in America we have lost one of the most vital makers
and shakers of the musical world. … A hunk of our landscape
has disappeared.” But much of him has stayed with us. is
summer is swaddled with Bernstein’s voice, from the largesse
of the musical-theatrical event of the season,
Mass
, and its
hundreds of onstage performers, to the choral masterpiece
Chichester Psalms
, to the solo vocal feature of the “Jeremiah”
Symphony, and, of course, the centenary man’s songs.
Jack Zimmerman graduated from the Chicago Conservatory with a degree in
trombone performance. He taught low brass at Arkansas Tech University, was
a Navy bandsman during the Vietnam War, and, at 38, began writing. He’s
authored several thousand newspaper columns and two novels, and in 2012 he
was bestowed the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Arts Achievement Award.
AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 19, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
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