While the voice and orchestra format is much beloved of composers owing to the immediacy of words, it has not enjoyed a great amount of attention from them since about 1970, and this doesn't make sense. After all, singers tour, symphony orchestras can certainly use such material to spice up programs and audiences don't seem to mind them. One performing artist who is a staunch advocate of orchestral song is baritone Patrick Mason, a professor of voice at the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an ...
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While the voice and orchestra format is much beloved of composers owing to the immediacy of words, it has not enjoyed a great amount of attention from them since about 1970, and this doesn't make sense. After all, singers tour, symphony orchestras can certainly use such material to spice up programs and audiences don't seem to mind them. One performing artist who is a staunch advocate of orchestral song is baritone Patrick Mason, a professor of voice at the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an artist frequently heard with orchestras worldwide. Bridge's American Orchestral Song features Mason in five orchestral song settings, three of which come from the years around the turn of the twentieth century, when the format was alive, well, and reasonably common. The other two settings are late career outings by composers Roy Harris and Virgil Thomson, both old enough to remember when the popularity of vocal/orchestral music was at its height. In relation to the others, their works...
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