Random acts of music

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Countertenors are as rare as hen's teeth in this day and age. So one of my delights in discovering English choral ensemble Voces8 was that their music director Barnaby Smith sings countertenor (they used to have two but the second left and was replaced with a female alto). So imagine my joy when their channel posted a video of him singing Handel's aria Ombra Mai Fu, probably the best-known countertenor solo work. Barnaby rarely performs without the group so it was a treat to hear him on his own. And then I found out the video was a promo for his NEW FREAKIN' ALBUM!!, a collection of Handel arias with baroque chamber orchestra The Illyria Consort. The orchestra gets one track to itself (the famous Arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Solomon) and otherwise it's mostly Barnaby showing off his marvelous voice. He is joined by British soprano Mary Bevan on a few tracks, another artist I now need to check out.

 
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Here's one of the duets with Mary Bevan. Quite liking her, too. Good soprano voice and apparently a baroque specialist (though there are some YouTube videos of her singing other eras/styles, most are baroque).


And if you're wondering, Live from London is a virtual concert series Voces8 have been running through the pandemic. The first was about a year ago and I think there have been three to date.
 
I really like the way they watch each other to make sure their synchronization is bang on.

I love a contralto voice. With the understandable fall in popularity of castration, it's a pretty rare voice.

Is it the rise in amplification techniques that has resulted in so many "smaller" opera singers? They used to be more uniformly "barrel-chested", male and female both.
 
BetteTheRed said:
I really like the way they watch each other to make sure their synchronization is bang on.

I love a contralto voice. With the understandable fall in popularity of castration, it's a pretty rare voice.

Is it the rise in amplification techniques that has resulted in so many "smaller" opera singers? They used to be more uniformly "barrel-chested", male and female both.
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Puts a new twist to what's "counter" in the barrel ... rye's tuff? Just way tous Kohl ...
 
Simone Simons of symphonic metal band Epica is another of the many terrific singers in that genre. Here she is tackling an aria by Handel. "Ombra mai fu" is really a countertenor aria (see a couple posts above) but given the dearth of good countertenors in the 20th and 21st centuries, it is often sung by sopranos and mezzos (Simone is the former).


The concert, by the way, actually was an Epica concert. They teamed up with an orchestra for a performance at the Miskolc Opera Festival in Hungary. The concert was released as the band's second live album and features the orchestra doing classical pieces and joining the band for some of Epica's songs.
 
And I have probably posted this before (it's on my "wall") but this is Epica at their finest in a virtual live performance from earlier this year. What a stage show.


And, yes, Simone is magnificent in this, moving easily between her rock and classical voices.
 
Another Moody has left us. Learned last night that Moody Blues drummer and poet Graeme Edge passed away at 80 this week. That leaves only two active band members (singer/guitarist Justin Hayward and singer/bassist John Lodge) and even they haven't played together, AFAIK, since the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame though both have done solo work and toured individually.

From a TV appearance in 1969, featuring some of Graeme's poetry as a lead-in to a classic song.


And one of my favorite of his poems ended their classic 1967 album Days of Future Passed. Late Lament follows on from their classic song "Nights in White Satin" and perfectly ends both song and album. Can't seem to find a performance of the song that includes it just now, so here's the song from their recorded 1992 concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, followed by the words of Graeme's poem.


Breathe deep the gathering gloom,
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?
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And note that Nights in White Satin also features a flute solo from the other late Moody; singer-songwriter and flautist Ray Thomas.
 
Whitesnake's "Here I go Again", featuring the powerful voice of David Coverdale, was eighties hard rock at its finest. And here two terrific voices pair up to cover it. Violet Orlandi and Daria Zaritskaya are both powerhouse singers and Daria's band, Shershen & Zaritskaya, provides great backup. And they have another collaboration coming soon on S&Z's channel, the eighties heavy metal classic "Rock You Like A Hurricane" by The Scorpions.

 
And here is the flipside from Shershen & Zaritskaya's channel. S&Z don't always do heavy metal and hard rock, but it is what they are best at. This cover rocks. No other way to put it.

 
Finnish bassist-singer Marko Hietala announced at the beginning of 2021 that he was leaving his 20 year relationship with symphonic metal band Nightwish and withdrawing from the music industry save for some already arranged projects.

Not sure if this is one of those projects or a sign of Marko's imminent return, but it is sure nice to hear him singing some new material. He is singing in his native Finnish here, so don't worry if you can't follow the lyrics.;)

The song is actually by the guitarist and wonderful piece of blues it is.

 
After 20+ years fronting bands, Dutch singer Floor Jansen has started doing some solo recordings and shows as a side project to her regular gig as lead singer of Nightwish. And with help from her patrons on Patreon, she is releasing a professional recording of one of those solo shows. This performance, a new arrangement of a Nightwish classic, is the first release. And it is gorgeous. A bit of a lighter touch than Nightwish give it (their version can actually be pretty raucous, especially back when Marko Hietala was around to do the "Dream of me" response at the end of the chorus), but still packs a lot of energy.


Funny how hard it was to get the audience clapping. At a Nightwish concert, the audience clapping and singing along would have been part of the performance right from the start.
 
The second release is one of her own, with words by Floor and music by Norwegian guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad and originally recorded by them under the name Northward. Northward is one of Floor's best non-Nightwish albums and it is too bad that the project had to be a one-off due to their other commitments. At least she is using some of the material in these solo shows.

 
I have, of late, been delving into, and enjoying, the work of a community of Romanian bands and singers. They cover everything from light pop to metal under various band names, with a guitarist named Andrei Cerbu as the heart of it all.

One of the singers in this community is Beatrice Florea, who is part of a group called Shut Up and Kiss Me as well as having her own solo channel. Like so many of my favorite female singers (e.g. the aforementioned Floor Jansen), she is classically trained even as she focusses most of her career on pop and rock. Here she is with a classical performance.


Beatrice with Andrei and another guitarist for a cover of a hit by 4 Non Blondes. This is more her usual. Her classical channel has 4 videos, whereas she has an active pop channel as well as appearing on various other channels run by Andrei.


And "My Immortal" by Evanescence is one of those rock songs that demands a strong, trained voice, having been written by Amy Lee, who is one of the best. And Beatrice handles it beautifully.

 
And you probably knew Nightwish was going to come up, right? No one writes powerful, operatic rock quite like Tuomas Holopainen of the Finnish symphonic metal giants, and here Beatrice tackles, successfully, one of Tuomas' best.


And teaming with up with Iron Cross, another Andrei Cerbu project, for one of Nightwish's heavier tunes. The petite redhead duetting with her is Iron Cross' regular lead singer Andreea Munteanu, who is no slouch in the vocal department herself, even if this song doesn't show her at her best since she is trying to emulate Nightwish's male singer Marko Hietala.


And while I am highlighting Beatrice here, I will point out that probably the real star of the group is Andrei, who is a serious talent on both electric and acoustic guitar as well as being the brains behind the whole project.
 
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A Dutch singer singing in Dutch in The Netherlands doesn't sound strange, but Floor Jansen normally sings in English so this is a bit of a treat. English is kind of the lingua franca of popular music (as it is in business), necessary to succeed internationally, so even bands whose core following is in non-English speaking parts of Europe tend to write lyrics and sing in English.

 
Train are a force to be reckoned with, they can slow it down or rock it up and have a brilliant vocalist in Pat Monahan. Very talented band with some great songs to listen to, very strong words that communicate a message in each song. Here's two songs from their 'Save me San Francisco' album: Surprisingly, they hail from San Francisco and were formed in 1993 and still going strong.



Enjoy! :giggle:
 
I have little time for country music, although I dabble in bluegrass. But I LOVE Alison Krauss, with or without Robert Plant.

A beautiful song:

 
BetteTheRed said:
I have little time for country music, although I dabble in bluegrass. But I LOVE Alison Krauss, with or without Robert Plant.
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I am much the same. Country is one of the few music genres I generally blanket avoid but Krauss gets a bye. I first came across her through her cover of "When You Say Nothing At All" (which I did not realize was a cover at the time). Her work with Plant kind of surprised me but then I considered the range of music he has done over the years (e.g. Honeydrippers) and decided that was maybe not such a surprise.
 
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