Joyce DiDonato, mezzo soprano & Craig Terry, piano, Featuring the Legendary Jazz Players Chuck Israels, Jimmy Madison, Lautaro Greco, & Charlie Porter
Monday, February 25, 7:30PM
Ordway Music Theater
“Perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation” (the New Yorker), multi GRAMMY Award winner Joyce DiDonato returns to the Schubert Club’s International Artist Series to perform a special program in the Ordway Music Theater. With a voice that is “nothing less than 24-carat gold” as proclaimed by The Times, she is among the world’s most entrancing performers. Born in Kansas, Joyce has soared to the top of the industry both as a performer and a fierce advocate for the arts, gaining international prominence in operas by Handel and Mozart, as well as through her wide-ranging, acclaimed discography. Joyce’s program for this concert will feature music from her upcoming recording, SONGPLAY. In her own words, “this is a project of experimentation and play, aimed at giving a joyful (playful!) experience to the listener.”
ABOUT SONGPLAY
Joyce DiDonato greets you with a song in her heart and twinkle in her eye. The American mezzo-soprano’s program Songplay unites extraordinary musicians from the varied worlds of opera, jazz and tango in the pure pleasure of improvisation, experimentation and exchange. Together they create their own musical language, surprising listeners with timeless melodies transformed and universal stories retold over centuries; songs in English, in Italian and – naturally – in the universal language of music.
“We have essentially created our own sound-world, fusing together music from the Baroque era and classics from the jazz world – with a few other surprises tossed in,” explains Joyce. “We’ve all let down our guard (some of us have even let down our hair) and we’ve each expanded the musical traditions that we have come from to create our own style for this program. It’s joyful, it’s exuberant, it celebrates great music, and it shines a spotlight on the timeless nature of a great song.”