However his recital on the Kennedy Heart’s Terrace Theater put Austin the place he belongs, middle stage, with accompanist Howard Watkins. As a map of Austin’s musical journey, the recital moved via spirituals and commonplace repertoire into 20th-century and up to date artwork tune and opera. It additionally discovered Austin dominating the stage, leaning in opposition to the partitions, reducing himself to the ground, standing at its edge, palms out and up. He’s a pure performer — a star awaiting a galaxy to type round him.
Austin opened and closed his recital on religious notes — starting with Shawn Okpebholo’s luminously spare association of “Oh, Freedom” and later an encore of Julia Perry’s “I’m a Poor Li’l Orphan in This World,” a low-glowing religious with accompaniment by Watkins as tender as moonlight.
However this system between these bookends proved Austin greater than an thrilling singer — with a burly, burnished tone able to placing nuance and shade. He’s an equally intriguing thinker. Tuesday’s efficiency had the informal self-portraiture of a cabaret, the variability and depth of a strong DJ set and the unabashed anti-fascist spirit of a punk present.
A full of life studying of Ravel’s “Don Quichotte à Dulcinée” put early give attention to Watkins’s attentive accompaniment — a high quality match to Austin’s elastic theatricality. This was placed on full show for Klezmer singer and composer Daniel Kahn’s “Embrace the Fascists.” Primarily based on a 1931 poem by Kurt Tucholsky, it’s an acidic, sardonic primer for a way to not deal with Nazis: “You wouldn’t need to begin a combat, for preventing is what they do finest. Embrace the fascists and also you’ll be blessed.”
As soon as struck, this foreboding chord resonated the remainder of the night time: A fiery account of the “Ballad of the Simple Life” from Weill and Brecht’s “Threepenny Opera” delivered us into intermission, with the identical present’s “Name From the Grave/Demise Message” welcoming us again. Austin sank to the ground and located gorgeous softness and subtlety in its andante.
His voice hovered like a vapor over Ricky Ian Gordon’s setting of Langston Hughes’s “Track for a Darkish Lady,” and I cherished the element and drama he delivered to Gordon’s “Marvin Gaye Songs” — a two-part setting of textual content by poet Vievee Francis, strewn with stray bits of Gaye’s music, lovingly indulged by Watkins.
The 2 made one thing chic of Robert Owens’s “Mortal Storm,” an aching five-song setting of Hughes. In reality, one might simply think about Austin performing a whole night time of Hughes settings, so naturally suited are the contours of his voice with the shadings of Hughes’s poetry. Together with Perry’s “Orphan,” Austin provided the highly effective parting second encore of Damien Sneed’s “I Dream a World,” a setting of Hughes composed particularly for the baritone in 2021.
It was a efficiency and a program that balanced ease and urgency, the political and the private — utilizing the recital corridor as a stage and the stage as a platform.
The following night time on the Terrace Theater, tenor Johan Hoskins took an equally autobiographical flip along with his Vocal Arts DC recital.
Accompanied with deep sensitivity and masterful contact and timing by pianist William Woodard, Hoskins opened with a collection of calisthenic musical portraits by Jake Heggie. “Pleasant Persuasions” is a brief, four-song cycle involved with French composer Francis Poulenc’s coterie of buddies and associates. It was a intelligent opening choice, permitting Hoskins to shape-shift and present the various sides of his jeweled tenor — extra typically put in service of the lighthearted lyricism of Rossini or Donizetti.
“You in all probability thought you have been going to come back right here to snort,” Hoskins stated from the stage, “however not tonight!”
From there his program — informally titled “Down the Rabbit Gap” — provided what he termed “a religious autobiography” in musical pictures: The blooming of a flower in a dream and the eager for that dream in actuality (Lee Hoiby’s “What If …”); the enjoyment of affection and the fragility of life (Schumann’s “Du bist wie eine Blume” and “Meine Rose”); the anguish of loss (Heggie’s “Ophelia’s Track,” with its devastating chorus: “The spring is arisen and I’m a prisoner there”).
Hoiby’s setting of Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights” (a reference to a celebration part, maybe?) delivered a sudden tonal shock and a showcase of the facility of Hoskins’s instrument, which often graveled out when pushed demandingly low. A lighthearted suite of jaunty Satie items — “Les Trois Melodies” — furnished contemporary pre-intermission smiles, largely due to Woodard’s eager timing and wit.
We returned to confront a sequence of monsters: These in our creativeness (Hoiby’s “Jabberwocky”), these within the mirror (Schubert’s “Der Doppelgänger”) and those who steal our innocence (Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig,” to which Hoskins lent a raw-edge terror).
Nevertheless it was within the closing stretch that Hoskins let his voice get comfy and reveal itself. A duo of songs about solitude — Samuel Barber’s “Need for Hermitage” and Heggie’s “Pleasure Alone” — prefaced a spectacular account of Benjamin Britten’s “Canticle I: My Beloved Is Mine.” To italicize the love letter to tenor Peter Pears that Britten coded into this 17th-century textual content by Francis Quayle, Hoskins swirled additional sweetness into its closing lento. I might love to listen to Hoskins sing extra Britten — it was electrical and alive, and appeared to coax a depth that was in any other case fleeting.
He ended this system with Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” from “Firm” — an uplifting end that suffered awkward silences from the absence of voices reprimanding the anxious Robert. A pair of encores discovered Hoskins dipping right into a candy spot of his repertoire, a lovingly adorned “Ah! Mes Amis” from Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment.” This was adopted by Jack Gold and Marty Paich’s deeply neurotic association of “Jingle Bells?” — appropriately fitted with a query mark for Barbra Streisand’s 1967 “A Christmas Album.”
Like each different tune on this system, Hoskins made clear that this one was private.
“You may be tempted to sing alongside,” he stated as a preface with a cheeky smile. “Please don’t. That is my recital, not yours!”