Renée Fleming Teams Up with Wayne Shorter in SLSO Gala

Monday September 27, 2010

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Renée Fleming teams up with Wayne Shorter in SLSO Gala
By Sarah Bryan Miller

The American public seems to take just one soprano at a time to its collective heart. For many years, that soprano was Beverly Sills; these days, it’s Renée Fleming.

She’ll appear in a gala concert at Powell Symphony Hall on Oct. 2 with David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, singing some popular arias (including lots of Puccini); the aria that might be considered her leitmotif, the gorgeous “Song to the Moon,” from Dvorak’s “Rusalka”; some lighter music; and a world premiere by jazz icon Wayne Shorter. (It’s only her second appearance in St. Louis; she gave a recital at the Sheldon in 2004.)

It’s hard to put Fleming into a box; she’s a lyric soprano with coloratura tendencies who takes on all kinds of music. She’s the archetypal American opera singer who does it all — French repertoire, German repertoire, Italian repertoire, you name it — and comes up a winner. She still sings some of the musical theater tunes and jazz that she performed when she was a student. And while most singers would just offer a parade of popular favorites in a gala concert, Fleming’s doing the new Shorter piece, based on a Maya Angelou poem.

“I’ve been a fan of (Shorter’s) since I was a college student,” Fleming said in a telephone interview, “and I was so excited when I realized that David Robertson was also a fan,” when they met at a school function for their children. They discussed commissioning a piece by him for Fleming to sing in St. Louis.

Read the entire article here

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