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In a program of songs highlighting a broad vary of American compositional voices — Black, homosexual, feminine, previous, new — the baritone Justin Austin confirmed off a mighty lyric voice with dramatic aptitude on the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan on Tuesday night.
Austin’s tone is deep and earthy, with a firmly stitched timbre that withstands some high-octane singing. On the Armory, he discovered operatic climaxes in most songs — his excessive notes have been sturdy, shattering, indefatigable. And as he warmed up, his breathy tender singing started to convey feeling too, although there was little shade in his remedy of texts. (Affected by allergic reactions, he turned upstage to blow his nostril between most songs.)
This has been a busy time in New York for Austin. Earlier this yr, he sang the lead position of the tough laborer George in Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera “Intimate Attire” on the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the place his massive, hard-edge sound overwhelmed the microphone he didn’t want. In Might, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Marcellus in Brett Dean’s “Hamlet,” projecting into that capacious home with youthful vigor.
However within the intimate recital setting of the Board of Officers Room on the Armory, his built-for-power voice tended to run roughshod over poetry, as within the opening group of 9 Gordon settings of poems by Langston Hughes. Gordon’s dashing, exuberant melodies swimsuit a supple voice that soars, however Austin’s swings like a hammer. At occasions it labored: He rode a path to glory within the punishing conclusion of “Harlem Evening Tune,” with its ecstatic collection of excessive notes.
He related extra profoundly with Hughes cycles by the Black composers Margaret Bonds (“Three Dream Portraits”) and Robert Owens (“Mortal Storm”). Bonds’s “Minstrel Man,” a couple of performer whose humanity is invisible to his viewers, stirred a wry, subversive spirit in Austin. In “Dream Variation,” his voice flowed naturally, and “I, Too” was defiant — the sound of somebody not prepared to attend for his second within the solar when he has the power to grab it for himself.
There are occasions when Owens’s “Mortal Storm,” which featured the night’s most pessimistic poems, appears like a dense piano discount of an opera rating. “Jaime” is a 40-second tempest, and “Trustworthy One” is thick with bass chords. The pounding triplets of “Genius Little one” recall Schubert’s “Erlkönig,” each of them harrowing fantasies of a murdered boy. It’s not a cycle for the faint of voice, and Austin excelled in it, even discovering rhythmic playfulness and a contact of sensual romance. “Genius Little one” ended with a satan’s journey into the bracing line “Kill him — and let his soul run wild!”
Then, in a breath-catching flip, got here Aaron Copland’s lullaby to a crying child, “The Little Horses,” sung in hushed, consoling tones. Its easy starlight impressed the prettiest enjoying of the night time from the pianist Howard Watkins, who usually made this system’s wide-ranging kinds sound homogeneous and unsubtle.
Towards the top, Austin sang spirituals and gospel with an unforced expressivity that sustained every bit’s temper. His single encore, “I Need Jesus to Stroll With Me,” was delivered a cappella. With out a piano at his again, he rose to the event. There have been highs and lows, thunder and cries — and sweetness, too.
Justin Austin
Carried out Tuesday on the Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org.
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