by Daniel Hathaway
Countertenors lead interesting and varied professional lives that are reflected in the wide range of roles they sing.
Take the example of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who will make his Apollo’s Fire debut this weekend in a pair of Johann Sebastian Bach’s rarely performed Easter works.
Cohen, who graduated from Princeton in 2015, will come to Cleveland immediately after returning to his alma mater to sing the role of the Angel in Edward Elgar’s mystical Roman Catholic oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.
And with Apollo’s Fire, the countertenor, who grew up in a Jewish household, sang in synagogue, and studied cantorial music, will sing the allegorical role of Fear (Furcht) in Bach’s Cantata 66, then take on the persona of Mary Magdalene in the composer’s Easter Oratorio — two Pietist Lutheran works.
“My two alter egos,” Cohen quipped in a recent telephone interview. [Read more…]
“I am fairly certain that in the 131 years of the Singers’ Club, this will be our first event with an interactive audience element.”
Like many, composer Ty Alan Emerson watched the events of January 6, 2021 unfold on the national news. “Even though I wasn’t there, I felt that this was an attack on me, my belief in our Constitution, and our democracy,” Emerson said during a telephone conversation, adding that he “needed to do something.”
