In a brief aside in the latest MMP thread I mentioned about how we had gone to a concert with primarily music by Gershwin and Ellington, and how the opera singer they brought in was the wrong choice of voice for that sort of music. I’m sure the woman has spent untold hours honing her instrument and is considered quite good in opera circles, but IMO she shouldn’t be tackling jazz licks with that voice.
Now the question is: do trained singers know when they shouldn’t be venturing into another genre? Is it just my ear that’s offended? I would think they would know that while they’re hitting the notes, the genre is just all wrong for them. I bought a Christmas album by Diana Krall a couple of years ago without first sampling the music. HUGE mistake. While I like her jazz styling, that is NOT a genre that works well for her phrasing, etc. But I’m wondering if she realized it.
The song I do at karaoke
Everybody expects that I can sing anything on karaoke but, in all honesty, I’m absolutely dreadful. I murder anything I attempt. I have tried Whitney, Céline and Adele, and it’s a disaster. I’m just not trained as a pop singer. My husband always says: “You shouldn’t do that in public.” So I go for something unexpected, like Empire State of Mind. I can do the Jay-Z rap and the Alicia Keys singing parts.
But Diana Krall is a jazz/pop singer, not from another genre. I don’t understand that reference.
Yes, I agree that opera singers should in general stay away from more popular genres. One that made something of a success of it, way back in the 50’s, was Eileen Farrell. Although trained as a soprano, when singing jazz/pop standards, she used her chest voice and changed her phrasing. I think this was after her opera career was over, because the photos and videos I’ve seen show her in late middle or early old age. She’s the only one I’ve ever heard make that transition reasonably well, but of course there may be others I don’t know about.
Apart from hitting the pitches, singing is pretty subjective. I was taught a classical style, with all the pure vowels, damped vibrato, rolled r’s, no dipthongs, crisp exact diction. That all sounds pretentious in pop, which is all about emoting in a ‘realistic’ voice. Some few people can switch between styles. Some people, obviously, think they’re switching but aren’t.
I don’t know that pop needs a specific voice in the sense of range or tone, it’s more of a style or approach. Often I am surprised by how many pop singers carry a song not by techique, range, or quality of voice, all of which many pop singers are very much lacking in, but purely by confidence and expressed emotion.
Well, singers who know they shouldn’t attempt another genre aren’t going to be making recordings of it, right? So the only ones you’ll hear butchering another genre are those who are oblivious.
One would hope. The concert we went to wasn’t recorded, obviously. I was just surprised that she accepted the invitation to appear as a guest star to sing something out of her wheelhouse.
I saw the Three Tenors singing “New York, New York” once. Their style was completely inappropriate for the song – too much power one a song that should be smooth.
Many classical musicians have repertoire they excel in, other where they’re ok to bland, and some where they’re awful. So, you have people who are specialists of late Renaissance Italian madrigals and others who are the reference for Belle Époque French orchestral music.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have someone like pianist Sviatoslav Richter who was very good to legendary in everything. The only duds in his legacy are some of his Brahms which he tackled at the tail-end of his career. But apart from that, his interpretations of anything from Bach to Prokofiev are consistently excellent.
So I’m guessing that professional singers with any sort of self-awareness will know what they should or shouldn’t try to take on. And of course - for the listener - it’s a matter of personal taste.
Here’s Yuja Wang, one of the finest living classical concert pianists, dipping her toes into jazz. I don’t think there’s anything she can’t play insanely well.
If we are mentioning instrumentalists you can’t leave out Wynton Marsalis. He’s the only musician to win a Grammy in the classical and jazz categories in the same year.
