Washington Classical Review

Baritone Quinn Kelsey performed with pianist Craig Ketter in a recital presented by Vocal Arts DC Sunday evening. Photo: Courtney Ruckman

Quinn Kelsey made his Washington debut in 2007, under the aegis of what was then known as the Vocal Arts Society. The vocal promise heard in that recital has matured into an international career on the operatic stage. The Hawaiian-born baritone returned to Vocal Arts DC for a masterful concert of English-language song Sunday evening at Live! At 10th and G, the intimate venue where the presenter will offer the rest of its season.

American repertoire opened the evening, beginning with four selections from Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs. Kelsey sings English texts with admirably clear diction, although the strophic songs in this set often lacked enough variety to sustain interest. Kelsey’s comic timing kept the first two, “The Boatman’s Dance” and “The Dodger,” light and fun, but “Simple Gifts” and “Long Time Ago,” while lovely, fell somewhat flat as the stanzas simply repeated.

Far more arresting was a set of songs by three composers, all on the poetry of Langston Hughes, an ingenious programming idea. Florence Price’s songs continue to reward rediscovery, including these two settings of enigmatic poems by this leader of the Harlem Renaissance. In “The Song of the Black Virgin” and “My Dream,” pianist Craig Ketter proved himself capable of both sensitive soft playing and a willingness to take the lead. The hint of Tristan-like night at the end of the latter song was an elegant touch.

Three selections from John Alden Carpenter’s Four Negro Songs evinced this white composer’s admiration for the sounds of jazz. Kelsey handled the challenge of singing in dialect in stride, as did Ketter with blues motifs tinging “The Cryin’ Blues” and “Jazz-Boys.” Kelsey sang the entire recital from memory, sometimes transposing or missing words, but the freedom from the score only enhanced the singer’s powerful communication of the music.

Margaret Bonds’ Three Dream Portraits proved the best of this set, beginning with the affecting “Minstrel Man,” a plea for sympathy from a misunderstood performer along the lines of “Vesti la giubba” from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The second song, “Dream Variation,” set the same poem as Price’s “My Dream” and to more mysterious effect. Bonds published these songs in 1959, and her version of Hughes’ iconic poem “I, Too” felt like an anthem of its time. Bonds omitted Hughes’ last line (“I, too, am America”), making that sentiment seem unfulfilled.

To open the recital’s British section, Kelsey returned to the highlight of his 2007 recital, Gerald Finzi’s Let Us Garlands Bring, a set of five songs from Shakespeare’s plays. This time around, Fetter’s handling of the rich harmonic and melodic material in the piano accompaniment set a vivid backdrop for Kelsey’s earnest voice in these effortlessly idiomatic versions of celebrated texts. The theme of love, so precious given the shortness of life, came through in both vocal and pianistic ways.

The Finzi pieces and the concluding set, Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel, also made interesting connections with the themes of the Langston Hughes songs as well. The Shakespearean refrain “With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino” recalled the “Hey! Hey!” that “the Blues singers say” in one of the Carpenter songs. The lonely poems of Robert Louis Stevenson, sung by the “Vagabond” of the first song, hit on similar themes of displacement and oppression.

Kelsey plied the full range and power of his supple voice in the Vaughan Williams songs, from a burnished top range in “Youth and Love” to potent, gravelly, world-weary bottom notes in “Bright Is the Ring of Words.” The cycle hit its apex in the almost surreal wonder of “The Infinite Shining Heavens,” followed by rueful nostalgia of “Whither Must I Wander?” The dual strengths of the baritone voice, sharp anger and dulcet murmur, both came through ideally.

The regret for a lost home, so vividly felt in the Vaughan Williams pieces, found its answer in the first encore, “Goin’ Home,” the tender song created by William Arms Fisher from the English horn solo in the slow movement of Antonín Dvořák’s NInth Symphony. Kelsey chose to end with a nod to his operatic career, albeit in English rather than Italian, with a lyrical rendition of “Warm as the Autumn Light” from Douglas Moore’s Ballad of Baby Doe.

Vocal Arts DC co-hosts an event called songSLAMDC 5 p.m. April 11 at Live! At 10th & G. vocalartsdc.org