Susan Graham on “Martha Stewart Show”
Tomorrow morning, on Tuesday, January 6, the Grammy Award-winning mezzo
Susan Graham will appear on the Martha Stewart Show as its first celebrity
guest of 2009. Susan Graham and Martha Stewart will cook a healthy dish to
start off the New Year, and discuss Un
frisson français, Susan
Graham’s newest recording of French songs on the Onyx label.
Graham’s
appearance with Martha Stewart follows her highly successful appearance with
Maestro Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic for the orchestra’s New
Year’s Eve gala, which was broadcast nationally on PBS TV’s Live From Lincoln Center. Susan Graham
sang, among other items, the two principal arias from Bizet’s Carmen, the “Habanera” and “Seguidilla”. Ms. Graham also sang arias from two of
her signature roles, Sesto in Mozart’s La
clemenza di Tito and The Merry Widow of Lehár’s popular operetta of the
same name. In a review of the gala performance, the New York Times praised Ms.
Graham for her “glorious vocal tone, keen intelligence, outsize
personality and, as appropriate, sparkling wit”.
When not singing, Susan
Graham acts as host for many broadcasts and live events. She was the host for the Emmy Award-winning
Live From Lincoln Center telecast of Madama Butterfly from the New York City
Opera, and elegantly hosted the opening night of the Met’s 125th
anniversary season for local movie and open-air audiences in the season’s first
Live in HD transmission.
She also hosted the HD broadcasts of John Adams’s Dr. Atomic and last season’s Tristan
und Isolde. Ms. Graham opened
this season as host of both the National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors
and the Opera News Awards.
Susan Graham’s newest CD, Un
frisson français, earns high praise
Susan Graham’s latest
CD, Un frisson français, was recently
featured in a BBC Music cover story
for the magazine’s “Special Issue on French music.” London’s Sunday Times named the disc one of the “Best
CDs of 2008,” calling it “one of the most delicious
surprises of the year,” while the Denver Post selected it as one of the “10 Classical Albums That
Mattered In 2008.”
“The program I have
recorded with Malcolm Martineau is a really rich variety of French mélodies
over a hundred-year span, from the mid-19th to mid-20th
century. It’s a rich tapestry –
from Bizet to Poulenc – and it provides a delicious variety of romantic, saucy,
lush, humorous, and offbeat songs,” explains Susan Graham. “I wasn’t familiar with many of them
before I learned them for my recital tour in 2007, including Fauré’s rarely
heard “Vocalise-étude”, but I have truly fallen in love with each one. Some are heartbreaking; some are
dramatic – almost operatic – in scope, like Bachelet’s “Chère nuit”. Some are little brush-strokes, and some
create a whole landscape. There
are animal songs, nature songs, love songs, songs about love manqué, and
some subtle French humor thrown in for fun. They make up a varied and rich program. If they were food and you were in a
restaurant, these songs would be the entire appetizer menu, and you’d have to
order them all.”
For further information
about Susan Graham’s appearance on the “Martha Stewart Show,” please check
local listings and visit www.MarthaStewart.com
In New York City, the
“Martha Stewart Show” can be seen on WNBC, Channel 4, at 11am on Tuesday, Jan.
6
For more information
about Un frisson français, please
visit: onyxclassics.com.
For more information
about Susan Graham and a full performance schedule, please visit: