Voce di Meche’s Meche Kroop presented a septet of promising young singers in a diverse and welcome Around the World in Song program at St. John’s Episcopal Church, also known as St. John’s in the Village, on February 28, with participants offering selections from their native lands. Helping to illuminate this varied repertory were Music Director Aza Sydykov and, sharing pianistic duties, Pablo Zinger.
Zinger was at the keyboard for the opening groups of songs in each half of the performance. Soprano Maria Brea, from Caracas, Venezuela, began a cappella with the Venezuelan national anthem, the lullaby “Duérmete mi niño,” disclosing a beautiful, highly colorful lyric instrument and concluding with a well-placed high note. She used chest voice, in contrast, in Federico Ruiz’s earthier “Quiero Sembra.” She sang Antonio Estévez’s “Arrunango,” some of it hummed, some of it melismatic, with delicacy. Brea sang her next three songs in arrangements by Zinger. These were a fiery “La Negra Atilia,” by Pablo Camararo, also making use of her chest register; favorite family song “Desesperanza,” a bolero by María Luisa Escobar, giving it a spin its composer called “so operatic,” but ‘forgave’ her for it; and a lively “Alma llanera,” by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez, Venezuela’s second national anthem, originally part of a zarzuela, and capped it with a ringing top tone.
César Parreño, from Manabí, then Guayaquil, Ecuador, and currently attending the Juilliard School, revealed a bright bel canto tenor, as he had in the New York Festival of Song and Juilliard “Cubans in Paris” concert in January. A future in singing Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincezo Bellini opera is surely in store for him. Assisted by Zinger, Parreño gave us spirited celebrations of Ecuador’s provinces, cities, and people, in Francisco Paredes Herrera’s “Manabí;” “foremost Ecuadorean composer” Gerardo Guevara’s “Quito, Arrabal del Cielo;” and Carlos Rubira Infante’s “Guayaquileño, Madera de Guerrero.” Parreño concluded with a pair of romanzas, César Guerrero Tamayo’s love song “El Aguacate,” and erstwhile Nadia Boulanger pupil Guevara’s “Despedida,” a farewell to a loved one.
Pallavi Seth, from India, lent an engagingly exotic touch to the proceedings, accompanied on Tanpura and singing in Hindi a semi-classical song for the upcoming Hori, the festival of colors, and a classical bandish, from “Raag Khamaj.”
With intensity, soprano Claire de Monteil, from Paris, France, assisted by Sydykov, limned a utopian land of hope in “Youkali” and probed “the complexity of love,” she said, in the ambivalent “Je ne t’aime pas,” both by Kurt Weill. She ended with a dulcet “Les feuilles mortes” (“Autumn Leaves”), by Joseph Kosma and Jacques Prévert.
Kofi Hayford, from Ghana, singing in a sonorous bass, began with Ghanaian national anthem “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana,” in English, by Victor Gbeho, the singer’s great-granduncle, and continued with an a cappella “Yen Ara Asaase Ni” (this is our native land), Ghana’s unofficial anthem, in Akwapem Twi, by Ephraim Amu.
Colorfully-garbed Armenian lyric mezzo-soprano Alvard Mayilyan gave us four love songs, a sincere song of devotion “To Him,” by Hambardzum Perperian; a happily anticipatory “Hoy Nazan,” by Komitas; a gentle legato “Lullaby,” intimate song of a mother to her child, by Barsegh Kanachyan; and a lusty “Drinking Song,” “celebrating life and love” and “Armenian red wine,” by the prolific Aram Khachaturian.
Dark-voiced tenor Dashuai Chen sang three art songs in the classic tradition, in Mandarin, a lilting “Three Wishes of the Rose,” by Zi Huang; emotional “Teach Me How to Forget Him,” by Yuanren Zhao; and fervent “Love for the Sea,” by Guangnan Shi.
Voce di Meche’s next Around the World in Song, at St. John’s, 218 West 11th Street/224 Waverly Place, will be on May 29 at 8 p.m.