by Mike Telin
“This is a really positive moment for me career-wise,” vocalist Jimmie Herrod said during a recent telephone conversation. “Not just performing with any orchestra, but one of the Big Five. It’s beyond prestige and I’m really looking forward to it.”
On Wednesday, December 11 at 7:30 pm, Herrod will join conductor Sarah Hicks, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and the Blossom Festival Chorus for the first of twelve holiday concerts at Severance Music Center. Performances run through December 22. Tickets are available online.
Herrod said that although a handful of songs he will sing are ones that everyone knows, there are a few that are lesser-known. “We’re doing a version of ‘Jingle Bells’ that was famously done by Barbara Streisand. It’s all over the place tempo-wise and it keeps changing keys. We’re also doing ‘My Grown-Up Christmas List.’”
The vocalist also looks forward to the experience of performing twelve shows in a row. “It’s so many dates and it’s a nice compliment to be asked to be a part of something like this. And I’ve been lucky to share the stage with Sarah before, so it’ll be great to see her again.”
While many may know Herrod as a finalist during the sixteenth season (2021) of America’s Got Talent, where he also earned the “Golden Buzzer” from actress Sofía Vergara, he’s actually been performing with orchestras since 2014, when he started touring with a pops orchestra in Seattle.
“In 2019 was when the major symphonies started calling. The National Symphony Orchestra was the first one that really gave me a chance, which was a huge deal. And here we are fast-forwarding five years, and performing with Cleveland is massive.”
Herrod, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in composition and performance from Cornish College of the Arts and a Master’s in Jazz Studies from Portland State University, said that he is appreciative of the many opportunities the symphony world has given him. “From what I’ve experienced, it takes time to get those opportunities, but if you do get the opportunity and you perform well, that world is just big and just small enough that people say, ‘Oh, we had a wonderful time with this person.’ So for me, working in the symphony world has been very rewarding.”
Utilizing his composition and arranging chops, Herrod is currently recording an album of music by Stephen Sondheim. “I’ve been making arrangements of his music for a couple of years. I did seven or eight and I performed them once and then just let them sit in a folder. But when I had a show earlier this year that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, it dawned on me — what if I dusted some of those arrangements off and added them to that show? So the album is basically different Sondheim songs for me and a jazz ensemble.”
Another of Herrod’s projects is singing with the popular Portland-based ensemble Pink Martini, whose director, Thomas Lauderdale, he met through a mutual friend. “They met at a wedding and my friend basically started pushing for the two of us to meet because he said, ‘I could just see you guys working together in some capacity.’ And here we are, seven years later.”
When asked about his experience on America’s Got Talent, Herrod said it’s important to remember that it is a TV show with a lot of people making suggestions to the contestants. “There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes sculpting taking place. For me the big thing that they were fixated on was that I can hold these long notes. And because of that, they wanted a big long note in every song I did. And so that became my niche within the franchise of the show.”
AGT also gave Herrod a boost in recognition. “Millions of people saw me on the show and I still get recognized from time to time. I was in San Francisco this weekend and a woman who was visiting from Mexico City recognized me. Which is another thing, AGT is syndicated all over the world. So I’ve had that same experience at midnight walking around in Romania. It’s undeniable that a show like that can grow your visibility and people’s awareness of you. You can’t really wish that kind of thing into reality.”
Photo by Richard Poppino
Published on ClevelandClassical.com December 5, 2024
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