Composer Spotlight - Gerald Busby

Gerald Busby is an absolutely delightful person, if you ever get the chance to meet him.  That opportunity came to me sort of by accident.  After I had decided what I was going to program on this Whitman recital, I had to get the music.  Most of it was available through the invaluable Glendower Jones at Classical Vocal Reprints.  However, Gerald's piece, "Behold this Swarthy Face," was not, and Glendower did not know whom I should contact to get it.  So, I put out an inquiry on Facebook to see if anyone knew how to get in touch with Gerald.  Nothing.  I searched online.  The material available didn't have any contact info that I could use.  He did have a Facebook page, but it didn't look as if he used it much, and I wasn't even sure if it was really him or not.  After exhausting the options I figured I had, I decided to email Thomas Hampson.  It was his album, after all, that introduced me to the work, so I guessed that he might be able to give me some guidance.  I found an email address for his NYC office and fired off a message, expecting to wait several days for a response since he was just a little busy with an international superstar career.

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Composer Spotlight: David T. Little

One of the benefits of doing this program has turned out to be the number of living composers featured.  Of the eleven composers whose works I'm performing, five are still living.  To my colleagues in the musical theater world, that might not sound like a big deal.  It is, however, a big deal in the classical singing world since a great majority of our time is spent singing music by composers long since dead.  Throughout this year, I'll be posting about these composers, my conversations with them (if I've had one), and their music.

As I said in an earlier post, when I began researching this recital I knew that I wanted to commission a work for the program.  Whitman is the most frequently set American poet, so one would think that there was plenty of material to choose from.  There is a lot of material, however, I felt like this program in particular afforded me the opportunity to add to that collection by commissioning my own song.

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