WEST BRATTLEBORO — A unique fusion of traditional music with opera, Perception: Portrait of Tony Barrand, will premiere in two performances on Saturday, May 23, at 7 and 8:30 p.m., at the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, 29 South St., West Brattleboro.
Perception will be performed by baritone John Moore, of opera stages worldwide, and a frequent participant at the Marlboro Music Festival.
He will be backed by an all-star cast of traditional musicians: Peter Amidon, Fred Breunig, Andy Davis, Keith Murphy, Becky Tracy, and Matt Wojcik, with a guest appearance by John Roberts. Perception tells the story of the traditional English singer and dancer, Tony Barrand, in his own words, from an interview conducted by Lawrence Siegel, composer and librettist.
Barrand is known for his performance and recording career with singing partner John Roberts, as well as for 40 years of seasonal performances with Nowell Sing We Clear (featuring Barrand, Roberts, Davis, and Breunig). He is also known for his scholarly research and writing on forms of traditional dance and song from the British Isles and Anglo-America.
He has taught anthropology, folklore, and psychology, at Boston University, as well as Morris, sword, and clog dance, at Country Dance and Song Society in Easthampton, Mass., and elsewhere. Barrand is a founding member of Marlboro Morris and Sword, and with them created the Marlboro Morris Ale to vitalize seasonal display-dance traditions and to bring dancers from across the United States, Canada, and England to Windham County each Memorial Day weekend.
John Moore is a recent graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Program, and participates in the Marlboro Music Festival.
The 2014-15 season saw Moore return to the Metropolitan Opera stage as Moráles in Carmen, and Nachtigal in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, debut at the Atlanta Opera as the Conte Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, cover the role of Tadeusz in Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of The Passenger, appear throughout New York City as part of the Metropolitan Opera's Opera in the Parks concerts, and sing Lawrence Siegel's Kaddish with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.
Siegel is a composer, theater artist, traditional musician, and creator of a range of music through collaboration and innovation. His series of Portrait compositions are cabaret-operas that tell the stories of individuals and their relationships.
For more than 25 years, in leading his Verbatim Project, he has facilitated groups that create original music-theater performances in their own voice, ranging from the quirks of small-town life in New England, to the redemptive telling of the Holocaust story through the acclaimed oratorio, Kaddish.
Assisting Siegel with production and choreography for Perception is Kari Smith, who comes to this project with more than 30 years of experience in dancing and teaching the English and Anglo-American traditional dance forms she learned first in her studies and collaboration with Barrand, at Boston University. Her expertise in traditional dance, and enduring friendship with Barrand, inform her integration of dance into the work.
Tricinium, a Keene, N.H., arts service organization, is producing Perception with support from the Outreach Fund of the Country Dance and Song Society, the Marlboro Ale Association, and many individual donors.