World-class recitals at the university are free to the public.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
Pepperdine University, for the fifth year, is showcasing SongFest 2008, a performing workshop that gives an international roster of singers, pianists and coaches the opportunity for in-depth study with a distinguished faculty of artists, and gives Malibu audiences a chance to be wowed with exceptional recital performances.
As described by founder and co-director Rosemary Hyler Ritter, SongFest is an “intensive” and competitive concert workshop led by world-class faculty like John Musto, “the most distinguished composer in America today,” and pianist David Trippett, Harvard professor and recipient of dozens of professional development grants, fellowships and performance awards.
“This program has rather difficult music and the people who participate come from all over the world,” Ritter said. “It’s rare to have the quality of performances you will see in this concert series.”
Launched 13 years ago by Ritter and her husband, John Steele Ritter, SongFest offers a series of concert performances at Raitt Recital Hall on the Pepperdine campus free of charge, with the support of The Marc and Eva Stern Foundation and The Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
“Most summer concert programs concentrate on opera,” Ritter said. “We’re more an art song [defined as a vocal composition, usually written for one singer with piano accompaniment] festival, and we have an unusual mix-up of music from Bach cantatas to the songs of popular American composers like Gershwin.”
SongFest holds auditions in major cities around the country for a few coveted slots available in the program each year, and is known to be instrumental in the development of major performers’ careers. “We have several alumni who go on to brilliant careers,” Ritter said. “Jessica Rivera is a Pepperdine and SongFest grad who has a major operatic career going on. Katie Van Kooten worked with us and is now singing with the Paris and [The] Royal Opera in London.”
Emily Albrink is a post-graduate from Manhattan School of Music and three-time SongFest performer. A soprano of crystal clarity, she was selected to join the Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera and sang in last Friday’s performance of John Musto’s “The Book of Uncommon Prayer.”
“SongFest gives singers a safe, but challenging place to explore who you are,” Albrink said. “With their emphasis on art song, you have the freedom, and pressure, to go out and really deliver a song, without sets and costumes to help you.”
Albrink said that working with distinguished faculty Graham Johnson and Martin Katz was thrilling enough but that, one day, she would be able to look back and say, “I worked with John Musto.”
Soprano and Pepperdine grad Jillian Stout echoed the sentiment.
“Art song is a bit of a dying breed,” she said. “For this program, each singer gets seven pieces to learn, and working with Musto’s great compositions is a challenge. Most of his pieces have all mixed meters.”
Musto’s program last Friday saw the first half showcasing his own compositions of shifting time signatures and masterful choral arrangement set to 20th century poetry by the likes of Katherine Mosby, Archibald MacLeish and W.H. Auden.
Far from being esoteric or inaccessible, the pieces ranged from the touching “I Stop Writing the Poem” by Tess Gallagher (“I’ll get back to being a woman. But for now, there’s a shirt, a giant shirt in my hands…”) to a naughty “In Flagrante Delicto” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Mosby’s poem, “Let Sing the Bedsprings,” is a sly composition with choral voices pealing like bells and MacLeish’s “Old Photograph” is a poignant rendition of a man who notices in a photo that his love’s eyes “aren’t laughing.”
Musto himself provided the piano accompaniment for the second half of the program, titled “American Songbook,” which featured music from the great American popular composers of the last century, including the Gershwins, Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael, Leonard Bernstein, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green.
Introducing each title with a brief, and usually droll, history of the song, Musto played with such fire and obvious connectivity with his singers that the truly special relationship between vocalist and accompanist was as much a show as the outstanding quality of the singing.
The performers showed off some acting chops as well, with a melting rendition of Rogers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and a reflective version of “My Time of Day” from “Guys and Dolls” that trumped any of Marlon Brando’s anemic vocal attempts in the film.
Unfortunately, this program will not be repeated, but there will be two more opportunities to enjoy SongFest this year. Attendance is free, but if the excellence of last Friday’s performance was any indication, seats will be hard to come by.
There will be SongFest concerts Saturday, June 14, and Monday, June 16, at 7 p.m. at Raitt Recital Hall. More information can be obtained online at www.songfest.us