Graduate Recital, Vocal Performance

The master of music recital, being one of my final musical endeavors before the completion of my graduate degree in vocal performance, featured a wide variety of repertoire. As a new member of the tenor fach, finding music that is challenging and appropriate for my level of development was difficult. The recital featured works by Stefano Donaudy, Hugo Wolf, Èduardo Lalo, Gabriel Faurè, Georges Bizet, and Samuel Barber. Each musical set presented its own challenges. The Italian set by Donaudy featured smooth legato vocal lines intertwined with a thick musical texture and lavish supportive harmonies. The German Wolf set featured more angular and tonally progressive music that was very different from the Donaudy set. The French set featured two famous tenor arias from operas by Lalo and Bizet respectively and a well-known, but little performed, song cycle by Faurè, each appropriate for the union of a vocal fach transition and performance of a master of music recital. The most challenging set of the recital was the Barber settings of poems by James Joyce - a set which challenged me to utilize the full extent of my vocal and artistic talents. This set solidified the growing nature of challenge throughout the progression of the recital and placed a final exclamation point on the growth and development I have displayed as a vocalist, artist, and performer the past two years. Overall, the completion of the recital required the utmost sensitivity to the artistic needs of the music and the utilization of my full vocal development in order to do justice to the spirit of the music