Baritone Nathan Gunn's new CD Just Before Sunrise is a collection of standards by Jimmy Van Heusen, Tom Waits, and Billy Joel, combined with new songs by Ben Moore, Gene Scheer, and Sting. It's a winner, neither full classical nor pop nor crossover, but a new expansion of American song. Nathan Gunn has been a leading artist with the Metropolitan Opera since 1995; he sang Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute in the Met's first HD cinema presentations beamed into movie theaters worldwide. He returns to the Met in New York and in the movie theaters next season as Mercutio in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. In this interview, Gunn talks about his CD, and the differences between singing on stage and in a recording studio. [audio src="http://wosu.org/audio/classical/2007/nathan_gunn_interview_080207.mp3"]
Highlights From This Interview:
"When you sing on an opera stage, it's always a much larger paint brush. There's no amplification there. So the ability to use the softer side of singing - which really is as effective but impossible to do on some of these stages, but in a recording room, it's the perfect place for it. I tried to use that as much as I could. In my opinion, I think people go to the theater, to the live theater for a completely different experience when when they put on a recording and want to listen to it in their home or in their car." "The performing arts - in my opinion - are 'live.' A (studio) recording is a different kind of art form. It's more of a group effort. You have a lot of engineers, and you've got a producer, and you have the musicians. It's more like painting, it's more like sculpting something that will be permanent."
