Three barihunks to make grown men cry

Jonathan Hare, Kenneth Kellogg & Jarrett Ott (L-R)

Three barihunks will be featured with the NY New Music Collective in an evening of songs by four-time Emmy Award winning composer Glen Roven. Jonathan Hare, Kenneth Kellogg and Jarrett Ott will perform Songs That Make Grown Men Cry Opus 41, based on texts from a collection of poetry edited by Anthony Holden and Ben Holden. They will be joined by tenors Andrew Fuchs, Glen Seven Allen and Myles Mykkanen and a choral quartet.

Roven wrote of the song cycle: 

I got in touch with the Holdens and they gave the project their blessing. I knew it would be composed for a group of men, obviously, and I tried to come up with all the permutations possible for two tenors, baritone and bass. Picking the poems was a bit of a challenge; many of the poems had the men “crying” for the same reason: a sense of loss. I thought that would be too brutal for me, so I chose poems that reflected different reasons for the tears: tears of joy, tears of wonder, tears of glory, and of course tears of loss. Also when I started writing, The Death of Klinghoffer was very much in the news and the creators kept insisting their piece was intimately based on Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion.” I saw Klinghoffer twice and for the life of me, I couldn’t make sense of that comment. However, it did give me the inspiration to compose chorales in this cycle. There are three: the first and last songs, and the middle song to break up the set.

Also on the program will be internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard singing the composer's Goodnight Moon Opus 17, as well as his  six Ancient Chinese Songs Opus 38, performed by soprano Laura Strickling. 

The performance will be at Spectrum in New York City on March 19th at 8:30 PM.