Vocal Arts DC Presents: An evening of American Song

Description

Tenor Ben Bliss and pianist Christopher Allen open our season with a celebration of American song in all its variety — from Broadway wit to concert-hall lyricism, folk-inflected balladry to poetic art song. The evening ranges freely across the American songbook, threading together the theater music of Sondheim, Rodgers and Hart, Bernstein, and Weill with the songs of Ives, Barber, and Liebermann, and the setting of poets as distinct as E. E. Cummings, Langston Hughes, and Allen Ginsberg. It’s a program that moves with ease between the bright patter of numbers like “The What-Cha-Ma-Call-It” and the aching intimacy of “Lonely House”—music that captures both the exuberance and the tenderness at the heart of the American voice. Bliss brings to this repertoire a voice of exceptional beauty — bright, focused, and capable of extraordinary refinement — along with a natural feel for the wit, swagger, and vulnerability this music demands, whether he’s channeling Sondheim’s restless “Being Alive,” or the sly nostalgia of “One for My Baby.” Expect an evening that is as much a portrait of a nation’s music as it is a showcase for one of the outstanding tenors of his generation. With Christopher Allen — a collaborative pianist and conductor of rare gifts and long experience at the highest levels of the art form — at his side, this is an opening night to savor and to celebrate.