A Concert for Ukraine
Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, Strauss, Beethoven
Featuring: Metropolitan Opera, Lise Davidsen, Elza van den Heever, Jamie Barton, Piotr Beczala, Ryan Speedo Green, Vladyslav Buialskyi, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Released: August 12, 2022
On March 14, 2022, the Met presented a benefit performance to support Ukrainian citizens under attack, with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra and Chorus and star soloists in a performance that was broadcast live via radio around the world. This CD contains the entire 70-minute program, which featured music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, Strauss, and Beethoven, with soloists Lise Davidsen, Elza van den Heever, Jamie Barton, Piotr Beczala, and Ryan Speedo Green, as well as Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, who led the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem.
Unexpected
Shadows
Jake Heggie
Featuring: Jamie Barton, Jake Heggie, Matt Haimovitz
Released: September 18, 2020
Star mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton presents a recital of songs by American composer Jake Heggie, with the composer at the piano. Unexpected Shadows is a celebration in words and music of powerful, exceptional women. The program contains four song cycles, a standalone art song, and an opera aria. The Work at Hand, set to poetry of the late Laura Morefield, contemplates the brave fight against cancer that she, and millions like her, went through. Matt Haimovitz’ cello playing adds an extra layer to this profoundly moving song cycle. Iconic Legacies, with texts by Gene Scheer, offers four portraits of remarkable First Ladies. Scheer also wrote texts for Statuesque, inspired by five iconic sculptures of women and the deeply human stories within them. Of Gods & Cats, based on poetry by Gavin Dillard, offers playful parodies on religious allegories. Music, set to a text by Sister Helen Prejean, addresses the transformative, healing, and humanizing power of music, while the “Ice Cube Aria” from Heggie’s opera If I Were You, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, shows the female demon Brittomara reflecting on the delicious predictability of human nature.
Le dernier sorcier
Pauline Viardot
Featuring: Jamie Barton, Eric Owens, Adriana Zabala, Camille Zamora
Released: March 1, 2019
A recently rediscovered treasure by one of the most compelling artists of the nineteenth century – the great mezzo-soprano, composer, and pedagogue Pauline García Viardot created the salon opera Le dernier sorcier, centered on themes of power and progress, gender and equality, and the restoration of natural order in an ever-changing world – a feminist eco-fable in operatic form. In soaring melodies and set pieces ranging from simple couplets to dramatic, quasi-Verdian ensembles, Le dernier sorcier holds its own among the remarkable operas of the period. Viardot's original manuscript, scored for solo voices, treble chorus, and piano, was held a private collection for over a century, and as such, the work essentially vanished.
All Who Wander
Mahler, Dvorak, Sibelius
Featuring: Jamie Barton, Brian Zeger
Released: November 11, 2016
Winner of the BBC Music Magazine 2018 Vocal Award, All Who Wander is inspired by something that lives within all of us, the little voice that wants us to step out and experience the world. Despite their diverse origins, this collection of songs by Mahler, Dvorak, and Sibelius represents thoughts and feelings that can be both universal and deeply personal. These songs echo human experiences, showing the fullness of our lives through moments that are often simultaneously raw and alluring, and always fascinating.
Album cover photo, pictured above, by Fay Fox.
Holiday Harmonies
Muhly, Higdon, Gilroy
ARTISTS: Jamie Barton, Maureen McKay, Essential Voices USA, Judith Clurman
Released: October 30, 2015
This holiday disc includes premiere recordings of vibrant new arrangements of seasonal favorites and new works that were written for the disc by some of America's finest composers, including "Whispered and Revealed" by Nico Muhly, "Love Came Down" by Jennifer Higdon and "Merry Christmas Wishing Well" by Gene Gilroy, arranged by Michael Gilbertson.
An Aids Quilt Songbook
Musto, Reda, Hersch
Featuring: Jamie Barton, Joyce DiDonato, Isabel Leonard, Matthew Polenzani, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, Sharon Stone, and many more
Released: November 18, 2014
An all-star cast of renowned singers and instrumentalists comes together on one CD to sing for hope and in the cause of supporting AIDS research. All profits from the sale of this album will go to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. This CD features new songs by established and emerging American composers, many specially commissioned to create a global musical portrait of AIDS today.
Featuring: Atlanta Opera, Benjamin Wenzelberg, Daniel Okulitch, Kristin Clayton, Jamie Barton, Jason Hardy, Gerald Thompson
Released: December 1, 2012
The Golden Ticket, a comic opera based on Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was commissioned by American Lyric Theater and Felicity Dahl from American composer Peter Ash and British librettist Donald Sturrock. Dahl's fantastic imagination is vividly brought to life in the witty libretto, and the completely original score ingeniously parodies many traditional operatic conventions to help portray the bigger than life characters that inhabit Wonka's world. The Golden Ticket is not just for children - it's an opera for everyone who is still young at heart!
La Dirindina
Domenico Scarlatti
Featuring: Ars Lyrica Houston, Brian Shircliffe, Jamie Barton, Joseph Gaines
Released: August 28, 2012
Ars Lyrica Houston offers a broad range of music from the 17th and 18th centuries on period instruments. Founded in 1998 by harpsichordist and conductor Matthew Dirst, this Grammy–nominated ensemble favors little-known dramatic and chamber works that merit revival. Their latest release features a rarely heard musical farce by Domenico Scarlatti.
Brief Encounter
André Previn
Featuring: Houston Grand Opera, Patrick Summers, Elizabeth Futral, Nathan Gunn, Meredith Arwady, Kim Josephson, Jamie Barton
Released: May 23, 2011
Brief Encounter, André Previn's second opera, is a compassionate, exquisitely touching study of emotional infidelity. This release was recorded live at the opera's exceptionally brilliant world premiere in 2009.
Antonio e Cleopatra
Johann Adolf Hasse
Featuring: Ars Lyrica Houston, Jamie Barton, Ava Pine, Matthew Dirst
Released: August 31, 2010
This serenade follows a love story for the ages: lovers from different worlds, loyal to their countries, but more loyal to each other. Hasse's score makes vivid the complex emotions of his title characters in eight arias, two duets, and some highly expressive recitative; the whole is introduced by a sinfonia in two movements. Though the work is scored for just strings and continuo, this recording adds various woodwind colors (oboes, recorders, flute, and bassoon), rendering even more colorful Hasse's imaginative and supple ideas.
A Savior from on High
Featuring: The Shorter Chorale, Martha Shaw, Patrick Harvey, Jamie Barton
Released: August 10, 2010
Beautiful arrangements of traditional Christmas tunes, plus newer pieces by Stephen Paulus and Craig Courtney.
Featuring: Houston Grand Opera, Patrick Summers, Albina Shagimuratova, Rebekah Camm, Faith Sherman, Jamie Barton, Beau Gibson, Liam Bonner
Released: May 1, 2008
The Refuge is a remarkable musical-dramatic work by composer Christopher Theofanidis and librettist Leah Lax that tells, in an astonishingly communicative and powerful way, the stories of actual refugees who have settled in Houston and now make up its fabric. The Refuge gives remarkable insights into the human condition, into why people are forced to leave their homelands and why they come to America, often overcoming staggering obstacles. The Refuge goes beyond explicating the emotions and thoughts of these people. It amplifies them, giving them a resonance that only music can. (Symphony Magazine)