2020 Vocal Rising Stars Week, “Art of Pleasure” | Day 1
Day One…
March 9th, 2020
I was already looking forward to my annual residency at Caramoor, the twelfth season of the Vocal Rising Stars Program. But as the world started to come apart at the seams, my trip to Katonah became more alluring than ever. This year’s program is called “The Art of Pleasure,” a concert I devised originally for Wolf Trap a few years ago. It was meant to remind an increasingly anxious audience about the things that make life worth living, ranging from the usual suspects (love, dreams, the seaside in summer) to less conventional ones (sexual congress on the down-low and a variety of wild self-indulgences). The message is even more timely now than it had been in 2018. The corona virus has everybody freaked out. Just this evening I read that Juilliard, where I teach, is suspending classes until the end of the month.
