NATHAN GUNN

Baritone Nathan Gunn is already creating the excitement of the all-too-rare complete artist. He continued his growing relationship with the Metropolitan Opera in March 1997 when he sang Guglielmo in the house's international radio broadcast of Così fan tutte. A graduate of the Met Young Artist Development program, his most recent appearances were as Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos and the Novice's Friend in Billy Budd. He will return to the house as Schaunard in La Bohème. Future operatic engagements are highlighted by debuts at Glyndebourne, the Bastille Opera and with the opera companies of Santa Fe and Seattle.

He is also a young master of Lieder (or German art song), a genre he fell in love with during his days as a music student at the University of Illinois. He so excelled in it he was engaged to take part in a seven-year series on the songs of Franz Schubert initiated in 1990 by John Wustman, one of today's most distinguished accompanists. His gift for Lieder shines in his concerts and recitals, as it did at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall where he sang Die schöne Müllerin to critical acclaim.

Recent concert engagements have included his Carnegie Hall debut in Brahms' German Requiem under Robert Shaw, appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi and the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur. He made his European debut in the title role of Mendelssohn's Elijah with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to the ARIA award, Nathan Gunn has won competitions and prizes coveted by aspiring young singers: the 1996 Marian Anderson Award, the Pope Foundation Music Award, the MacAllister Award, the St. Louis Symphony Young Artist Competition, and the 1994 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. At the MET, besides the roles already mentioned he has sung: Morales in Bizet's Carmen and Paris in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette.

This young baritone has also had successful associations with other opera houses. At 23 in the Boston Lyric Opera's production of Gounod's Faust, he sang a splendid Valentin of which it was written: " ...it was hard not to wish the opera was entitled Valentin, instead of Faust." He has also sung with the Opera Company of Philadephia, the Glimmerglass Opera, the Wolf Trap and the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in such diverse roles as Dandini (in La Cenerentola), Don Giovanni, Guglielmo, Papageno, and Oreste (in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride).

Mr. Gunn recorded on the EMI label a solo album of American songs and will soon record Bartok's Cantata Profana and Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem (with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra) on the Telarc label.

New York Times review: March 16, 2001
Serious or Light in Tone, a Baritone Walks the Line
By ALLAN KOZINN

Nathan Gunn's strong and sometimes steely baritone and a good measure of stage charisma and good looks have served him well in the opera house in recent seasons. Those are not bad attributes for a recitalist either, and on Tuesday evening he put them at the service of an interestingly varied program at the 92nd Street Y.

For the occasion he was accompanied by his wife, Julie Jordan Gunn, whose playing was both supportive and communicative on its own, particularly in a set of colorful cabaret songs by William Bolcom and in Ned Rorem's ruminative "Early in the Morning."

Mr. Gunn's program was an interesting balance of the sobering and the frivolous, and he proved equally at home in both, although he was at his most persuasive in weightier songs.

He began in that territory with a rich-hued, moving account of Brahms's late settings of verses from Ecclesiastes and Corinthians, the "Four Serious Songs" (Op. 121). He quickly established his strengths in these, including a resounding but not overpowering low register, a more tightly wound top and completely clear diction.

A group of Wolf songs continued in the spirit of the Brahms and, if anything, grew darker until the next to last selection, the ghoulish "Feuerreiter." But he ended the group on a lighter note, with "Abschied," a setting of the Mörike poem in which a visiting critic is sent hurtling down a flight of stairs.

The painful and the light-spirited were juxtaposed more starkly in Gene Scheer's "Voices of World War II." In five concise movements Mr. Scheer describes a child's view of his elders' trepidation when war is declared; a sailor's gratitude to a German U-boat captain for allowing a crew to leave before sinking its ship; and a harrowing description of the landing on Omaha Beach, flanked by descriptions of a soldier's leave in Hollywood and London. Mr. Scheer's eclectic music evokes the period without becoming a pastiche, and Mr. Gunn found ways to convey the texts subtly but directly.

The program also included a lukewarm rendering of "Shenandoah," the folk song, and a passionate account of the Jay Gorney and E. Y. Harburg Depression classic, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Here's an internet review of a recent recital by Mr. Gunn.

If I were to tell you I had attended a song recital where one of the most compelling and moving pieces on the program was "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" I suspect you would not believe me, and neither would I if I had not attended a recital given by Nathan Gunn at Hertz Hall on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley on Sunday afternoon, March 4, 2001.

This was the last scheduled piece of a program split between very traditional and somber German lied (Brahms' "Vier Erneste Gesaenge" and eight Hugo Wolf songs) and American music (songs by Gene Scheer, William Bolcom, and Ned Rorem as well as "Shenandoah" and the Gorney/Harburg depression song). It was sung in a rich, beautifully modulated baritone, with utter seriousness, and in the space of a few moments the heartbreak of the '30s came alive with astonishing vividness. Gunn was accompanied by Julie Jordan Gunn (his wife), who was competent but nothing more in the first half of the program, playing with little dynamic variation (except louder), but finally showing some subtlety and expression in the second half of the program, paticularly in the light and gentle accompaniment to "Shenandoah."

I suppose Gunn felt he need to establish his credentials by singing by the numbers the rather joyless Brahms songs and a selection of Hugo Wolf. His German is correct and clipped but as far as I was concerned this music constricted the easy flow of his otherwise mellifluous voice. He was good but nothing to write home about. And then came the second half of the program where all was transformed.

He began the second half with a compelling set of five songs by Gene Scheer (born 1958) called "Voices of World War II." The composer wrote the words as well as the music. Each song represents a reminiscence of vignettes, some poignant, some gruesome, of the war. "Holding Each Other" is told from the point of view of an 8-year-old whose memory of war being declared is of 'People standing in the street that night/holding each other in the pale moonlight." It is a gentle, eloquent evocation of painful memories ("Since that time war has taken friends/and each loss makes me think again/ of a bitter grief too deep to be spoken") presented with a simple but rich melodic line. "The German U-Boat Captain" tells of a sailor whose ship is sunk by a German submarine but not before the capitain of it gave the crew twenty minutes to flee in life boats ("And every time I see a child laugh or play a game/I pray that German capitain today can do the same").

The jaunty "At Howard Hawks' House" tells of two sailors on liberty in Hollywood, one of whom just misses winning Heddy Lamar's heart at Howard Hawks' house, while "Omaha Beach" offers a chilling and wrenching evocation of that horrendous battle with the haunting refain, "Young blood in the holy water." "Morrison Shelter" tells of the bravery of a young mother during the Blitz in London who places her children under the metal Morrison table during an air raid. These are marvelous songs that Gunn sang in a rich flexible baritone, etching the emotion of each with just the right tone and balance. One of his encores was another song by Scheer called "American Anthem." I suppose some people may trot out the standard "his music is derivative" remark about Scheer, but I found this set of songs immensely moving. I understand that this music is on Gunn's album of American songs released last year. After hearing them, I will definitely add this cd to my list of must buys.

Three "Cabaret Songs" of William Bolcom to poems by Arnold Weinstein followed ("Fur [Murray the Furrier]," "Over the Piano," and "Song of Black Max") which were by turns whimsical and spritely. Gunn also sang a simple and direct "Shenandoah" (avoiding the sentimentality that can diminish this folk song), two charming Ned Rorem pieces ("Early in the Morning" and "The Lordly Hudson") and then the superlative "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" The second of his two encores was a Charles Ives song.

Gunn's voice is the first half of the program was dark in tone and somewhat constricted (except in "Fussreise" and the creepy, legend-of-sleepy-hollowish "Der Fueurreiter") I guess he felt that fit the music but the voice just did not seem to flow as it did in the second half, where the tone was lighter and more expressive and fluid. He has an easy and appealing stage presence. I have heard him twice in opera at Santa Fe (in Berlioz's "Beatrice and Benedict" and as Harlequin in "Ariadne auf Naxos") and look forward to hearing him again but I hope he will feel free to sing the music closest to his heart in future song recitals.

Charles Schug