"My Funny Valentine" and numerous other creations by Rodgers and Hart are this country's answers to the art songs of Schubert and other European masters. Interpret them effectively, and the audience is overcome with admiration for a perfectly crafted marriage of melody with word.
That feeling was inescapable last Saturday when Martha Bassett, a local vocalist with few peers, teamed up with some of the area's finest jazz musicians in "My Funny Valentine: Music of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart."
"My Funny Valentine," in Gray Auditorium, opened this year's exceptionally strong Carolina Summer Music Festival, an eclectic affair that includes chamber music by everyone from Beethoven to Piazzolla. (The festival will conclude today with two concerts in Gray Auditorium.) And it underscored that Bassett is among the few singers who can deliver Rodgers and Hart with such warmth, expression of feeling and care.
Bassett enunciated each and every word with pristine clarity -- to the point where the music became not just a joy but a revelation of wit and vivid imagery. The instrumentalists sounded inspired, too.
Led by Matt Kendrick on double bass, they included pianist Federico Pivetta, drummer John Wilson, saxophonist Wally West, trumpeter Ken Wilmot and Jacqui Carrasco. Kendrick opened "Manhattan" with an unexpected-but-delightful solo of plucked notes and Pivetta embroidered Bassett's vocalizing with one stylishly played, lyrical line after another.
As for the rest of the festival, it is highlighting parts of the chamber-music repertoire that deserve more attention. A good example of this was "Summer Music," a program for piano (Alex Maynegre) and winds presented Thursday amid the glass-sculpture creations in the Jon Kuhn Studio.
The wind players, all members of area orchestras, included oboist Anna Lampidis, flutist Elizabeth Ransom, clarinetist Anthony Taylor, bassoonist Carol Bernstorf, and horn players Joe Mount and Robert Campbell. "Summer Music" featured Barber's wind quintet of the same name. It began with Quintet for E flat for Piano and Winds, and ended with Poulenc's Sextet.
In the pieces by Beethoven and Poulenc, Maynegre sported a fluid technique and a daunting versatility, in terms of styles and material. Summer Music, from 1956, was typically ambivalent in stylistic character. But it's difficult to imagine more idiomatically pleasing writing for winds. That goes for both solos and the entire ensemble, which unleashed a few moments of rhythmic quirkiness with aplomb and precision.
■ The Carolina Summer Music Festival will conclude today with two concerts. "Carolina Scrapbook: A Family Concert," with narrator Lanie Pope, will be presented at 11a.m. in Gray Auditorium at the Old Salem Visitor Center. "Tango!" will be presented at 7:30 p.m., also in Gray Auditorium. For tickets, go to www.carolinasummermusic
festival.org, or call 721-7350.
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement