Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Mason Jarboe to feature Clint Borzoni songs in recital; Debuts Sweet's Sommerlieder

Mason Jarboe as Don Giovanni
Barihunk Mason Jarboe will perform his senior recital at the University of North Texas Recital Hall at 5PM on Friday, December 2nd.  Joined by accompanist Boeun Kim, the program features works by Barber, Bach, Chausson, Mahler, Rossini (featuring mezzo-soprano Madelaine Martinez), Massenet (featuring soprano Megan Gryga), Barber, and Clint Borzoni. Jarboe will also perform the world premiere of Sam Sweet's Sommerlieder, with texts by the baritone. 

Avid readers of the site, might recall that Jarboe has appeared twice on this site, once in a group photo of barihunks doing the "baritone claw" and again with a group of barihunks at Seagle Music Colony sporting Barihunk T-shirts. He was a young artist at Seagle in 2014 and 2015.

We've never properly introduced Jarboe, who is a senior vocal performance major at the University of North Texas. We first saw him when he was just 19 and making After making his professional debut at the Fort Worth Opera as the French Sentry in Kevin Puts’ Pulitzer-winning opera Silent Night.  He recently sang the title role in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Opera in the Ozarks, where he had previously performed Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Michele in Puccini's Il Tabarro. In the 2015-2016 season, he was an education outreach young artist at The Dallas Opera, where he sang the role of Colas in Mozart’s Bastien and Bastienne

We asked Jarboe about some of the music on the program and what it meant to him. 

Of Samuel Barber's piece he commented, "The first song, Barber's St. Ita's Vision, was one of the few single pieces that I can trace back to really throwing me headlong into the vocal career track."

Randal Turner sings Clint Borzoni's "I Dream'd in a Dream":

This site has been a huge proponent of the American composer Clint Borzoni and helped fund a concert of American music featuring Randal Turner and the world premiere of two songs for String Quartet and Baritone performed by Marco Vassalli. 

We were thrilled to see that Jarboe was performing two of our favorite songs and here's what he had to say about them:
"The songs 'I Dreamed in a Dream' and 'That Shadow, my Likeness' are right up there with my favorite English language songs ever written. If I had time I would've thrown in 'Tired' from Vaughan Williams' Last Four Songs, but some other time. For me, those three songs in the final set of my recital paint such a poignant picture of the realization, really the epiphany, I had towards classical vocal music, and Clint's songs perfectly show the progress I have made within my own life; the thankfulness of the first piece in which I can recognize everyone who has so warmly embraced me on my journey towards true artistry as well as the sense of community I have felt; truly a 'city of friends,' and the second, the acceptance of myself. The understanding that every perfectly imperfect aspect of me comes together in such a funny and beautiful way to create a human, a man, an artist, that I am proud to present today, no matter how many high G's he has to put out in a recital (11, and four F#s) and no matter what anyone around him thinks. Thanks to such perfect settings of such perfect texts by Mr. Borzoni, I know that my art matters, that I matter as an artist, and, most importantly, that what I and my brilliant colleagues do as musicians has such an important role in so many people's everyday lives that I will never stop striving to show to them. I just adore his music, and I really can't wait to get to work on my next Borzoni project."
Composer S.K. Sweet's Sommerlieder is a 21st century take on the romantic German song cycle. Its texts, written by Jarboe in the Summer of 2014 at Seagle Music Colony in Schroon Lake, NY, are part of a larger collection titled "Texts you never got from me," a collection of actual text messages that he tried to send that were mostly not delivered due to the poor cell service.

 Make sure to order your 2017 Barihunks in Bed calendar, which is on sale now at LULU. 

Support independent publishing: Buy this calendar on Lulu.

Glenn Seven Allen and Edwin Crossley-Mercer

No comments:

Post a Comment