News
ENLARGE
Once upon a time, before hi-fi and the iPod, music-making in the home was how many people got their musical fix. In intimate surroundings, music lovers would play and sing for friends, perhaps from the classics, or popular music from the shows. Over time musical performance would move to the concert hall and to the solitude of headphones, and the intimacy was gone.
Twin Cities Concert Association (TCCA) with its long tradition of chamber music performances revives that intimacy with its House Concerts in private homes. Such concerts provide a very different experience: The audience becomes part of the show. The communication with the performers is close and immediate.
TCCA's July 5 House Concert featured the duo of Broadway baritone Kurt Hansen and pianist Ken Hardin in a program of excerpts from many of the best known Broadway shows of the past sixty years, from Oklahoma and Carousel to Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys.
Singing show excerpts without staging presents a challenge. No costumes, make-up or scenery, no instrumentalists or ensemble, no gradual unfolding of plot and development of character: The focus is all on the performer, with no distractions. The singer has only a few milli-seconds to establish the context and dramatic intent of the piece, and become credible as yet another character.
Hansen, with his long Broadway and touring experience, impressed with his gift for characterization, from the hopeful Tony (West Side Story) and the optimistic gambler Sky Masterson (Guys and Dolls), to Sam in the ABBA smash hit “Knowing Me, Knowing You” (Mamma Mia), with the eccentric Willy Wonka in “Pure Imagination” (Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, not actually a Broadway show) thrown-in for good measure.
His voice, certainly powerful enough to fill a Broadway theatre, has an impressive range too, with the driving energy needed to carry off Sondheim's “Being Alive” yet with the delicacy required for “Bring Him Home” (Les Miserables). The clarity of his diction would put many opera singers to shame.
Pianist Hardin, wearing one of his many musical hats (Hansen was once a voice student of his at Cal State Northridge), was no mere accompanist. With his own challenge of distilling the rich and complex orchestral sound for the keyboard, he was an effective and sympathetic partner in the musical and dramatic interplay.
I wasn't brought up on Broadway musicals (though at the age of 15 I did go to the first London production of West Side Story accompanied by the lovely Eva-Stina, and fell in love … with the music of Bernstein). But over time I have found I know more Broadway tunes than I thought. Alas, on Sunday I was forbidden to sing-along with Hansen and Hardin, but I was much tempted to, so infectious was their performance.
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Charles Atthill lives in Alta Sierra. He was recently to be heard singing in Music in the Mountains concerts, lurking among the baritones and wishing he was Kurt Hansen.
Twin Cities Concert Association (TCCA) with its long tradition of chamber music performances revives that intimacy with its House Concerts in private homes. Such concerts provide a very different experience: The audience becomes part of the show. The communication with the performers is close and immediate.
TCCA's July 5 House Concert featured the duo of Broadway baritone Kurt Hansen and pianist Ken Hardin in a program of excerpts from many of the best known Broadway shows of the past sixty years, from Oklahoma and Carousel to Mamma Mia and Jersey Boys.
Singing show excerpts without staging presents a challenge. No costumes, make-up or scenery, no instrumentalists or ensemble, no gradual unfolding of plot and development of character: The focus is all on the performer, with no distractions. The singer has only a few milli-seconds to establish the context and dramatic intent of the piece, and become credible as yet another character.
Hansen, with his long Broadway and touring experience, impressed with his gift for characterization, from the hopeful Tony (West Side Story) and the optimistic gambler Sky Masterson (Guys and Dolls), to Sam in the ABBA smash hit “Knowing Me, Knowing You” (Mamma Mia), with the eccentric Willy Wonka in “Pure Imagination” (Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, not actually a Broadway show) thrown-in for good measure.
His voice, certainly powerful enough to fill a Broadway theatre, has an impressive range too, with the driving energy needed to carry off Sondheim's “Being Alive” yet with the delicacy required for “Bring Him Home” (Les Miserables). The clarity of his diction would put many opera singers to shame.
Pianist Hardin, wearing one of his many musical hats (Hansen was once a voice student of his at Cal State Northridge), was no mere accompanist. With his own challenge of distilling the rich and complex orchestral sound for the keyboard, he was an effective and sympathetic partner in the musical and dramatic interplay.
I wasn't brought up on Broadway musicals (though at the age of 15 I did go to the first London production of West Side Story accompanied by the lovely Eva-Stina, and fell in love … with the music of Bernstein). But over time I have found I know more Broadway tunes than I thought. Alas, on Sunday I was forbidden to sing-along with Hansen and Hardin, but I was much tempted to, so infectious was their performance.
---
Charles Atthill lives in Alta Sierra. He was recently to be heard singing in Music in the Mountains concerts, lurking among the baritones and wishing he was Kurt Hansen.
