"But then, when half of your duo is Rhiannon Giddens multi-Grammy-winning folk singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur genius grant recipient and now a Pulitzer prize-winning composer to boot the name is all it takes. For this second concert in their Wigmore Hall residency, Giddens and long-time musical partner Turrisi asked a question: what might our version of a recital look like?"
"A diffident presence on stage, her tension ricocheting off Turrisi's fluid, conversational ease, Giddens is the ultimate performer reinventing herself with each song. She drew on a deep well of pain for Isolina Carrillo's Dos Gardenias, tone scratched and pitted like an old record, before wiping it clean with the trickling purity of The Trees on the Mountains from Carlisle Floyd's era-defining 1950s American opera Susannah reclaimed as the Appalachian folk ballad it never really was."
Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi presented a program that fused folk, opera, jazz, pop and classical elements in a voice-and-piano recital format. The performance traversed 1930s Harlem, 1960s Italy, Gaelic lullabies, original songs and opera arias, reframing works as folk material or classical idioms. Giddens alternated vulnerability and intensity, delivering Dos Gardenias with a scratched, pitted tone and Carlisle Floyd's The Trees on the Mountains with purity. Turrisi provided fluid, conversational piano that incorporated jazz and baroque influences and reimagined pieces such as Non c'e Niente da Fare and Bruno Martino's Estate through historical and stylistic lenses.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]