John Brancy takes WWI tribute to Carnegie Hall

John Brancy & Wallis Giunta (left): Brancy as Papageno (right)

On January 13th, John Brancy will be at Carnegie Hall to perform his recital honoring the centenary of World War I that he performed last month with Vocal Arts DC. The concert is titled "Silent Night: A World War I Centenary Tribute in Song" and features songs from England, Germany, Austria, France & America. He'll be joined by Ken Noda at the piano in Weill Recital hall. The program includes music by Butterworth, Gurney, Orff, Alma Mahler, Ravel, Poulenc, Debussy, Ives and renditions of "My Buddy" and "Danny Boy"

The gifted young singer, was the winner of both the Sullivan Foundation and Marilyn Horne Song Competitions before graduating from Juilliard. Brancy has also already made solo recital debuts at both Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and has appeared in opera in Paris, Dresden, and Frankfurt.

Tickets are available online.

If you want to see him in opera, you'll have to head to Canada where he takes on Papageno in Mozart's Magic Flute with the Edmonton Opera opening on January 31 and then Figaro in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro with Lyra Opera Ottawa opening March 21.  The latter production includes his girlfriend Wallis Giunta as Cherubino.

Promo video released for Edwin Crossley-Mercer's NY debut

Edwin Crossley-Mercer finally makes NY debut

It's no secret that like much of the opera world has been eagerly anticipating Edwin Crossley-Mercer's long-awaited New York debut on March 3, 2014 at the Weill Concert Hall. He will be performing Carmina Catulli, a 17-movement song cycle by Michael Linton based on the poems of Catullus, the Latin poet of the late Roman Republic. The song cycle comes with the warning, "Because the poems of Catullus deal with issues of sex in a frank manner, some members of the public might find them objectionable. "

We've certainly been curious about the music for his Big Apple debut and now the following promo video is available for the recital. Let's just say that it's not exactly Schubert's Winterreise. Michael Linton’s music is notorious for its emotional ferocity and extraordinary technical difficulty. The rest of the program will include Linton's Seven Franchetti Songs, settings of poetry by the Italian-American polymath Cody Franchetti. They will be performed by tenor H. Stephen Smith. The accompanist for the concert is Jason Paul Peterson.

Tickets are on sale now at the Carnegie Hall website, but we recommend buying now as the theater only holds 268 people. If you can't make it to the show, the songs were recently recorded in Nashville, Tennessee for release around the time of the recital. We will keep you posted. 

If you're in Europe, you can catch Crossley-Mercer as Jupiter in Rameau's Platée at the Theater an der Wien from February 17-28 and again at the Opéra Comique from March 20-30. His next European recital is April 10th at the Auditorium du Musée d’Orsay.