Recital Tour with Jake Heggie (Spring 2022)

Cal Performances

“Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton is both a powerhouse and a whisperer. In performance, the Georgia-born artist can unleash a torrent of vocal sound that seems unconquerable in its heft and intensity — then turn on a dime and shape an intimate melodic phrase with aching subtlety.

It’s an astonishing, almost otherworldly combination of gifts. And when you add in Barton’s charismatic ease onstage, her impeccable diction and her ability to illuminate a wide range of repertoire from standard to contemporary, you wind up with an event as exquisite as the recital she gave with the San Francisco pianist and composer Jake Heggie.

The program offered an array of music by Heggie himself, together with more and less familiar fare by Schubert, Brahms, Purcell and Florence Price. All of it was infused with the radiance and communicative grace of two artists working at the top of their respective games.

What arguably stood as the expressive high point of a program that was never less than enthralling is “What I Miss the Most …” a new song collection that captures with marvelous poignancy the feeling of the first year of the COVID pandemic.

To assemble this cycle, Heggie and Barton asked a wide range of friends and colleagues to respond to the title prompt, and set the results to music. Some came through with a simple line or two, others with elaborately structured poetry; all the songs that Heggie created from them — heard in their West Coast premiere — are magnificent.

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s brief lament for the joys of hearing live music becomes a tender, poignant elegy. (Yes, Heggie and Barton have a lot more celebrity friends than you or I do.) 

Perhaps most unforgettable is the final song, “You,” with a text by the pianist and educator Kathleen Kelly, Barton’s longtime recital partner. The words convey the power of distance and memory in shaping onscreen interactions between loved ones, and Heggie sets it to music of almost translucent emotion. Small wonder that Barton teared up in the course of delivering it, and she was hardly alone.

The rest of the afternoon brought countless other splendors, beginning with a matched pair of tributes to the power of music: an excerpt from “The Breaking Waves,” Heggie’s 2011 song cycle to texts by Prejean, and Purcell’s “Music for a While” in a potent, grab-you-by-the-lapels rendition. The 19th century offerings — three by Schubert, including a probing account of “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and three by Brahms — boasted a similar blend of tonal heft and interpretive fluency, and Price’s songs, though often on the sentimental side, gave evidence yet again of the composer’s inventive directness.

While most of the program was on the serious side, there was also the sheer joy of Heggie’s early diptych “Of Gods and Cats,” which Barton delivered with unbridled, hammy exuberance.

All these threads — comedy, tenderness, communal spirit — came together in the afternoon’s one brilliant encore. Here, Heggie created a mashup of “It’s You I Like,” Fred Rogers’ testament to unconditional love and acceptance, with the melodic strains of Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude. It was just the grace note the program needed.”
–Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“From the jump, Barton and Heggie captivated a rapt audience with glorious music-making and easy, witty, intelligent conversation. Barton seems to have a special rapport with the composer, and it seeps into the music. Everything flowed seamlessly and gained extra depth from their apparent mind-meld. Barton can amp up her richly textured voice into magnificent climactic moments and shape delicate phrases into something both conversational and musically fluid.”
–Harvey Steiman, Seen and Heard International

Vocal Arts DC

“One of the most subtly beautiful moments of the evening came in Price’s “Night.” Barton caressed the rapturous melodic turns, over the Debussy-like dreamy harmonies splayed out by Heggie at the keyboard. The final song, “Hold Fast to Dreams,” featured a thrilling leap from Barton’s chest voice up to the heights in the final line. The most delightful discovery of the program was that Barton’s voice is ideal for Brahms lieder. She took “Unbewegte laue Luft” at a luxuriant pace, drawing out the delights of the evening air described in the text. Her chest voice roared in the turbulent “Meine Liebe ist grün,” and her vocal power reinforced vivacious storytelling in “Von ewiger Liebe.””
–Charles T. Downey, Washington Classical Review