Kate Lindsey Wants to Make Something of It

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Kate Lindsey at Barns at Wolf Trap
Washington Post, April 11, 2011

If Alma Mahler, Dominick Argento and Miss Manners had attended the same dinner party, the conversation would have been endlessly diverting. At least that was the impression given by an approximation of such an evening, the delectable recital by Kate Lindsey on Friday at the Barns at Wolf Trap.

It was a homecoming for the Richmond-born mezzo-soprano, whose first local triumph was the title role of Wolf Trap Opera Company’s production of “La Cenerentola” in 2005. Her voice remains rich and rarefied, a dark-colored ribbon of sound that is silky but not boringly smooth. In little sets of pleasing songs by Bizet, Liszt and Ives, she was by turns sultry and powerful, with a husky chest voice that never crossed into graininess. Kim Pensinger Witman, the director of Wolf Trap Opera, was a sensitive partner at the piano, providing a carefully crafted accompaniment.

The eclectic program may have kept attendance on the low side, but it revealed an adventurous musical spirit. This was seen, for example, in the song cycle “Jeder Mensch,” commissioned last year by Lindsey from the young Egyptian-born London-born composer Mohammed Fairouz. The work’s appeal was due mostly to its incorporation of songs by Alma Mahler, who put her compositional aspirations aside when she married Gustav Mahler. [Continue reading]

Kate Lindsey (mezzo-soprano) and Kim Pensinger Witman (piano)
Music by Gounod, Liszt, Mohammed Fairouz, Ives, Argento
Barns at Wolf Trap

PREVIOUS REVIEWS:

• Tales of Hoffmann (Santa Fe, 2010)
  
• Don Giovanni (Santa Fe, 2009)
  
• L'Etoile (2007, Wolf Trap)
  
• Barber of Seville (St. Louis, 2006)
  
• La Cenerentola (Wolf Trap, 2005)

OTHER ARTICLES:

• More on Fairouz's 2011 song cycle Jeder Mensch
  
• Bill Lohmann, Have voice, will travel Kate Lindsey at Wolf Trap (Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 3)
  
• Judith Martin, The portrait of a lady: Judith Martin on sitting for Victor Edelstein (Washington Post, April 7)
  
• Tom Moore, Mohammed Fairouz: An Interview (Opera Today, September 12, 2010)
  
• Gary Hoffman, Kate Lindsey: An Interview (Opera Today, September 13, 2010)