Dear Theo: Reimagining the Art Song Recital
I'm very excited about my upcoming recital with pianist Victoria Shively on October 22. This project, which we're calling Dear Theo, gives us an opportunity to explore and recontextualize the art song recital. Rethinking the traditional recital format has been an important part of our work together, and we're delighted to continue that exploration.
There are three central ideas behind this project that I'd like to share: experimenting with recital formats, creating a multi-genre musical experience, and exploring the visual possibilities of both the stage and the concert program.
Exploring New Formats
Victoria and I have explored alternative ways of presenting art song throughout our collaboration. Our first major project paired Leoš Janáček's The Diary of One Who Disappeared with Benjamin Furman's Needlepoint, a new work that combined poetry from Janáček's cycle with contemporary articles about drug addiction, using computer manipulation to create a companion piece for tenor, prepared piano, and computer.
We've also presented several recitals without printed repertoire lists, announcing selections from the stage instead. This approach is meaningful to us because it more closely resembles the concerts many of our students regularly attend. I also believe it encourages a different kind of listening. Without a printed program directing attention toward what has already been performed or what comes next, audiences can engage more fully with the music as it unfolds.
This brings us to Dear Theo.
Some time ago, we decided to perform Ben Moore's beautiful song cycle Dear Theo, which sets excerpts from Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother. We were excited about the work, but, as we're wont to do, we began thinking about how we might present it differently.
Eventually, we found inspiration in the medieval musical practice of troping, in which new material was added to existing liturgical music, expanding or commenting upon its original meaning.
We've taken a similar approach with Moore's cycle. Each of the seven songs remains intact and in its original sequence, but we've placed additional music around them to explore and comment upon their themes. Each song forms the basis of a larger musical unit, with the fourth and fifth songs joined as one, preserving their attacca connection in the score.
Mr. Moore has graciously given us permission to present his cycle in this expanded format, and we've also secured the necessary rights and permissions for the additional music and reproductions of van Gogh's paintings used throughout the recital.
Each unit is associated with a van Gogh painting from approximately the same period as the corresponding letter.
The additional songs offer different perspectives on the ideas expressed in van Gogh's words. We're fascinated by the connections that emerge, and we hope audiences will discover both the universality of human experience and the distinctive ways artists have engaged with these questions across time.
Creating a Multi-Genre Recital
This brings us to our second idea: creating a recital that moves freely between musical genres.
For generations, musical taste has served as a kind of shorthand for cultural identity. The music we listen to can say something about who we are and where we belong. While this is certainly still true, I believe many contemporary listeners have a more fluid relationship with genre.
This is particularly apparent among our students. Most engage naturally with music from many different traditions, and for some, classical music is the unfamiliar territory, while popular genres represent their musical home.
As performers and educators, Victoria and I believe there is tremendous value in exploring music beyond the boundaries of our classical training.
In Dear Theo, audiences will hear contemporary rock, 1980s popular music, musical theatre, Tin Pan Alley, and classical art song. The vocal styles will be equally varied, incorporating straight tone, belting, and extended vocal effects, including supraglottic vibrations.
These differences are intentional. Rather than attempting to make every song sound as though it belongs to the same tradition, we want each musical style to bring its own expressive possibilities to the program.
Our hope is that these contrasting musical languages will illuminate the themes of Moore's cycle in unexpected ways, creating connections that might not emerge within a single genre.
Visual Exploration
A recital centered on the words of a painter, particularly one as culturally familiar as Vincent van Gogh, naturally invites a visual dimension.
Victoria and I have experimented with visual presentation throughout our collaboration, and for Dear Theo, we're taking that exploration further.
On stage, we're using three choral shells as the walls of an art gallery. Van Gogh's paintings will be projected onto these surfaces, with images and graphics changing throughout the performance. Song titles and translations, when needed, will appear within the visual presentation rather than in a conventional printed program.
We've also reconsidered the concert program itself.
As programs increasingly move online, new possibilities emerge for how audiences encounter information. Rather than simply reproducing a traditional printed program on a screen, we wanted to take advantage of the flexibility that digital presentation provides.
Our digital program is a scrolling collection of paintings and titles associated with each musical unit. Individual song titles are deliberately withheld, allowing the musical connections to unfold as the recital progresses.
After the performance, a complete repertoire list will become available through the digital program, so audiences can revisit the music and explore the connections they discovered.
The program itself becomes part of the artistic experience, encouraging curiosity without dictating how the audience should interpret what they hear.
Bringing It All Together
Ultimately, these three ideas serve the same purpose: to create new opportunities for audiences to engage with art song and the ideas it expresses. Van Gogh's letters are deeply personal, yet they speak to experiences that extend far beyond his own life: ambition, loneliness, friendship, frustration, hope, and the need to create. By placing his words in conversation with music from different eras and traditions, and by surrounding them with his paintings, we hope to open new ways of experiencing those ideas.
We don't expect every audience member to make the same connections, nor do we want them to. Part of the excitement of this project is leaving room for individual discovery. If audiences leave having heard something familiar in a new way, or having found an unexpected connection between two seemingly unrelated works, I think we'll have accomplished something meaningful.
We look forward to sharing Dear Theo with you on October 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Varner Recital Hall at Oakland University.
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