Disappointing Celebration of American Song

Yesterday afternoon in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the 2022 Merola Summer Festival presented its first public performance entitled A Celebration of American Song. The program was curated by pianist Craig Terry, Jannotta Family Endowed Chair Music Director of the Ryan Opera Center of the Lyric Opera of Chicago; and it was promoted as a joyous tribute to music from the Great American Songbook. Wikipedia defines the Great American Songbook as a “loosely defined canon of significant early-20th-century American jazz standards, popular songs, and show tunes;” and, for the most part, the program was true to that definition.

Where execution was concerned, however, the program left far more than much to be desired. Where the repertoire is concerned, Terry was clearly an enthusiast. However, he played his piano with such a heavy hand that it was more than apparent that he was determined to upstage all the vocalists, even during the opening and closing numbers that brought all of the Merolini singers on the stage at the same time. If his approach to accompaniment were not distressing enough, the printed list of songs had more than its fair share of inaccuracies, not to mention significant departures from the Songbook, such as the Italian “Ciribiribin” and a medley of tunes from cartoons such as the theme for Woody Woodpecker, all attributing composition (or arrangement?) to Joseph Barbera.

Mind you, whatever the shortcomings, it would be fair to say that all of the vocalists did their best to rise above the prevailing difficulties. Some of them even delivered downright convincing accounts that briefly blew away the many sources of distress. It would be hard to find a singer that could present a better interpretation of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” than Nikola Printz, embodying the full spectrum of the composer’s many personal dispositions. This was a welcome relief from Terry’s preference for dynamic range, which extended from loud to deafening (the latter applying to those opening and closing numbers with “all hands” on the stage).

Presumably, the very idea of a program of popular tunes from the twentieth century was intended as a departure from the usual routines of Merola performances. Under better management, such a program could have been not only attractive but also downright absorbing. Such management, however, would require more than enthusiasm, particularly when all that enthusiasm resided in the curator!