Julie-Ann Whitely Green

From Vox Ama Deus Chorister to Leading Lady at the Kimmel Center

in conversation with Richard A. Shapp

 

One of the wonderful things about Vox Ama Deus for Delaware Valley-based singers- and those of us in the chorus-is that Valentin Radu keeps his ears open for talent.  So, when talent warrants, as it unquestionably does in the case of Julie-Ann Whitely Green, Maestro Radu does not pigeon-hole a singer into an immovable slot in the chorus.

 

For several seasons, Julie-Ann has lent her strong vocal talents to Vox Ama Deus' choral ensembles.   But on Friday, April 22, at the Kimmel Center, she will be center-stage when Maestro Radu leads his musical colleagues in a very special concert entitled Rebels in Paris: Fauré, Stravinsky & Gershwin.  Let us meet Julie-Ann Whitely Green...

 

RAS: Julie-Ann it is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.  How did you and Valentin Radu and Vox Ama Deus first connect?

 

J-A: About 10 or 12 years ago I was engaged as an ensemble singer on a tour of concerts with Michael Crawford (he was the original Phantom of the Opera).  I quickly became friends with a mezzo-soprano in that vocal ensemble−this was Bonnie (Bronwyn) Fix-Keller.  After the tour, Bonnie arranged that I audition for Maestro Radu.  I sang Spirituals for the audition and was amazed at how well he knew the real "style!"  Ever since that wonderful day, I've sung with Vox Ama Deus as a member of the Ama Deus Ensemble chorus.  Also, Maestro Radu has invited me to be the guest soloist for Arch Street United Methodist Church's annual Martin Luther King service.  I've had the honor of singing at the MLK service for 10 years.  Valentin is the music director and organist there, and anybody who loves great organ music and phenomenal playing should pay a visit to Arch Street Methodist on a Sunday morning.

 

RAS: I'm professional singer, and I'm sure that you have heard the warning against singing in a choir...you'll kill your voice and ruin your reputation.  Obviously you too never heeded this "wisdom."  So, Julie-Ann, what do you find so appealing about performing in the Ama Deus Ensemble choir with its mix of pros and community members?

 

J-A: I think that Vox Ama Deus' dedication to, and focus on, early music is outstanding.  Of course, this starts at the top!  Valentin has such a great and deep passion for music.  I can feel his energy when he is conducting.  It makes for exciting performances!  The professional musicians of Vox Ama Deus are also versatile enough to perform a vast variety of repertoire.  I believe this helps show everyone's high level of musicianship.  The community volunteer choir members dedicate themselves to master very difficult choral parts.  So, with Vox Ama Deus it has been my good fortune to have performed many works of soul-enriching musical genius.

 

RAS: Where's home?

 

J-A: I'm a Jersey Shore girl!  I grew-up in Egg Harbor Township and went to Glassboro State College. [Interviewer's Note: I was taken by her very specific use of her Alma Mater's old-real-name!  Brava!!!]

 

RAS: Who was your most influential music teacher?

 

J-A: At Glassboro I had the great fortune to meet and study with Dr. Eugene Thamon Simpson.  Even though I am a teacher myself, I often go back to Dr. Simpson for guidance and advice.

 

RAS: Tell us about your voice and what you like to sing.

 

J-A: I believe that a good musician can perform any style of music.  Although I am classically trained, my vocal and piano performances have included different genres of music.  My voice type is called a lyrico-spinto, which allows me to sing more dramatic repertoire but do so with a lyrical spin, and also sing bel canto and early music with more color.  So I get the best of both worlds!  [Interviewer's Note: The Italian phrase bel canto literally means "beautiful song/singing," and in general refers to the operatic vocal style heard in operas by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti-about 1810 to 1840.]

 

RAS: Lyrico-spinto ... please define.

 

J-A: Literally it is Italian for "lyric" and "pushed."  So this means a lyric voice with some heft to it.  By the way-I speak fluent Italian.  But you know, describing voice types so that the public knows what we are saying can be difficult!  Sopranos, like all people, come in many shapes, sizes and vocal qualities [Interviewer adds-and temperaments].  Vox Ama Deus audiences know that Baroque and Classical musical compositions have lots of little notes-and that Valentin prefers to perform them at...uh...brisk speeds.  I think of the ladies who can nail this music to be like motorcycles that can zip through traffic; I'm more like the Mack truck-for when you need power!

 

This is not to say I avoid Baroque or Classical music−far from it.  But my voice is more congenial in music written for ladies where extra vocal substance is called for-like Mozart's Countess in Figaro or Donna Anna in Don Giovanni.  And the terrifying thing about this style of music for every singer is that is it like walking a tightrope.  The glorious vocal music of Bach, Handel and Mozart expose and magnify the good, the bad and the ugly-and especially what you can't do!

 

RAS: In the up-coming concert on April 22you will sing a special medley of solos and duets from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess with bass Kevin Deas.  Have you sung this selection before?

 

J-A: Although I've performed this same Porgy and Bess Suite with the Norwalk, CT and Allentown, PA Symphonies, the April 22 concert will be my first solo appearance with Maestro Radu and Vox Ama Deus.  I am so looking forward to this; each performance has special and unique qualities.  For example, the Ama Deus Ensemble orchestra, and especially the Perelman Theater, are each smaller than those in Allentown and Norwalk, and I expect this will make for a very intimate experience.  Some performers I know prefer the distance-the fourth wall-but I like to see my audience and connect with it.

 

[Although I had never met her before, I was really taken by Julie-Ann's manner.  So, I took a gamble to ask her about some long-held assumptions I had concerning the importance and legitimacy of Porgy and Bess.  I had always been on the "positive side" of the issue, but had long wanted to discuss this with an experienced African-American artist.  I urged Julie-Ann to frankly and freely disagree with me if she wanted to.]  RAS: "Vox's readers are far more interested in your insights than in my assumptions."  [Julie-Ann's replies poured out along these lines...]

 

J-A: Performing Porgy and Bess is a big deal.  It was often the first opportunity for a young African-American professional singer, or anyone one of us who wanted to be part of a recognized theatrical production, to get on a real stage in a legitimate artistic work.  Even today this opera can still be the gateway to a career.  And this applies both to chorus members and soloists.

 

My first staged Porgy production was a real eye opener on many levels.  I think it is the same for most of us who cut our teeth on the Porgy experience.  I began as a young member of the chorus.  I was able to watch, listen and learn from the more seasoned professionals, who often became good colleagues and friends.  Another amazing thing about Porgy and Bess is that for too many of us, we learned about our culture-things of the not too distant past that were never taught to us!  While rehearsing and performing Porgy many-me too-confronted disturbing aspects of our history about which we did not know.  This is the 75^th-anniversary year of Porgy and Bess.  I am very optimistic.  Chicago Lyric and San Francisco Opera have recently produced this work, and there are currently other revivals in smaller opera companies around the country.  Porgy and Bess is an honest masterpiece of the musical theater stage, and I love singing it.

 

But this time with Maestro Radu, during the concert suite Kevin Deas will sing "I've Got Plenty o' Nuttin'," and together we'll sing "Bess you is my woman now," while I'll sing two different ladies during this medley.  I hope I remember who is who when the time comes!

 

RAS: What else is new in your career?

 

J-A: Last November, I was the soprano soloist for the Verdi Requiem with the Lancaster Symphony.  This was my first time singing it and I received wonderful reviews.  In December, I had my debut as the Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors.  What a wonderful piece!  I hope to be able to sing it for many years to come!

 

RAS: Is there anything else would you like to tell the Vox Ama Deus readers and audience?

 

J-A: As a professional, free-lance musician, I've had the opportunity to use my gift of music in many different capacities-as a voice and piano teacher, a church musician, director of a community arts school, a theory tutor, a wedding singer...the list goes on and on!  I truly feel blessed to communicate with others through music.  Music is the universal language that can help to bring people together despite their cultural, political, religious or ethnic differences.  

  

Kevin DeasReturns to Perform with Vox Ama Deus
in conversation with Richard A. Shapp

 

 

A wonderful symbiotic relationship exists between Valentin Radu, the Vox Ama Deus organization and the majority of the musical artists you have come to know and admire. Because Maestro Radu and the musical ensembles he established always have been dedicated to advancing the cultural community of the Greater Delaware Valley, Vox Ama Deus has consistently promoted local talentmany now with international credits attached to their names.  In turn, these artists have shown a great affection and loyalty to their "home base."  Basso Kevin Deas is a shining example.

 

Kevin was last here in November 2009 when he brought his burnished basso voice to the stage of the Perelman Theater in a performance of Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass.  Within a month Kevin will return to collaborate with Valentin Radu and the Ama Deus Ensemble in a very special concert which is part of the Philadelphia International Festival for the Arts (PIFA).  This is Rebels in Paris: Fauré, Stravinsky & Gershwin on Friday, April 22 at the Kimmel Center, in which he will be the featured bass soloist in music by Fauré and Gershwin.

 

Due to Kevin's very busy performance and travel schedule he and I had to catch-up with one another over the Internet.

 

KD: I began singing with Valentin Radu in the early 90s.  From the very first, I really enjoyed making music with him.  I imagine that I am not the first colleague who has spoken of his special commitment to the music and how he inspires all of his forces.  The opportunities he gave me and so many others...the live concerts and the professional compact disc releases: let's see-we recorded Handel's Messiah with Julianne Baird, Jen Lane and David Price and Handel's hard-to-classify comic theatrical piece, Acis and Galatea, again with Julianne and David.  Bach-I was bass soloists in concerts of both the B minor Mass and the Magnificat that became Vox Ama Deus CDs.

 

I really look forward to having the opportunity to sing selections from Porgy and Bess and the Fauré Requiem on the same program.  There have been many times during the course of my career that I have sung contrasting musical styles in quick succession, but it's only lately that I've sung these diverse styles during the same program.  Too often, singers are expected to commit to performing certain roles or music from a specific period.  I have found that singing diverse repertoire is more interesting, and that it potentially increases one's marketability.  Fortunately, audiences and music directors have accepted me in these varied contexts; I am truly grateful for that.

 

For example, this past Christmas I sang Messiah with Boston Baroque.  The audience response was such that the music director asked me back for their New Year's concerts at Harvard.  I began my portion of the program with Handel's blustery and comic "O Ruddier than the Cherry."  I first sang this bravura gem of an aria for the character Polyphemus, thanks to Valentin, when we performed Acis and Galatea.  (Interviewer's Note: Polyphemus is the name of the Cyclops known to us all from Homer's Odyssey.)  I ended my set with what may have been the first "Ol' Man River" accompanied by a Baroque period instrument orchestra!  The gut strings worked perfectly with this great American classic.  After hearing me sing this Jerome Kern favorite, a board member remarked that she would have loved to have heard me sing "The Trumpet Shall Sound" the week before, but she had been out of town for Boston Baroque's Messiah.  I'm often been told that I've done well with something I am known to have performed−but that it was great to hear me sing "Ol' Man River" was an ironic first in my extended career!

 

In chatting with Kevin's colleague, Julie-Ann Whitely Green, I asked for her thoughts about Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.  Naturally, I wanted to learn some of Kevin's views about this seminal work for the lyric theater.

 

KD: I'd like to add some very personal thoughts to what Julie-Ann has had to say about the opera Porgy and Bess.   While I agree that the Porgy and Bess story is an African-American story, I've also noted, over the years, that it is not (for the most part) embraced by African-Americans as an authentic representation.  They, like many of my close friends (some of whom happen to be white), find the dialect and circumstances derogatory, that it not only presents, but promotes stereotype.

 

Before I sang Porgy, or any other opera for that matter, I listened to music for its beauty and sincerity.  As a teenager, I would enjoy listening to Italian opera with only the slightest clue (skimming through the libretto) as to what the story was actually about.  I didn't feel the need to understand the empirical oppression being expressed in the "Triumphal March" from Aida.  It just sounded like an inspired composition by one of histories most treasured musical masters.  I don't suppose that Ethiopians are too pleased by their representation in Aida either!

 

Whenever I am engaged to sing Porgy, I think, "OK here we go again."  Then I think, "Awesome...I have another engagement, but why Porgy, and why on my knees?"  I open the score, play the music that accompanies Porgy's first entrance, and from then on I'm in the ennobling, adoring arms of arguably America's greatest composer. 

 

It's always a pleasure to sing with Valentin and the many gifted artists associated with Vox Ama Deus.  I made my first recordings with them and they proved to be very valuable experiences.  Thank you Maestro Radu!