A Beautiful Finale: Chris Trakas Performs Spanish Songs and Ariettas

Good day all!

Well, the final day of ChamberFest, very sadly has arrived. The final concert would be wrapping up by now at Dominion-Chalmers. I finished off my ChamberFest schedule by attending Songs and Ariettas, a concert of Spanish vocal music presented by Chris Trakas (baritone) and Simon Wynberg (guitar). It was held at 3pm today at First Baptist. Regrettably, I missed the first half, but I busted my hump to get there for at least the second half. I couldn’t imagine a better way to wrap up things up this week than to sit comfortably in a church listening to the quiet stylings of voice and guitar. It’s not a combination I’ve heard too often in concert where it wasn’t pop of folk.

My experience of Trakas in particular was greatly informed by his performance last night at D-C (I blogged about this, you should check it out!). His ability to switch between styles so fluidly is quite amazing. Kudos to him as an artist for taking on such diverse programs literally back to back. The overall ambiance today was informal and rather light. If anything, I wish this atmosphere could’ve been explored even more. Occasionally Trakas would make comments between pieces, (and again, I only heard the second half), but it was very hard to hear them from the back of the church. I wish they could have anticipated the style of the delivery and set up a microphone for the dialogue. The audience was certainly receptive to his commentary and we wanted to hear what he had to say.  I would think that the repertoire was unfamiliar to most people, myself included, and it would have added to the concert greatly if short explanations had come before the songs. If anything, the duo was more than prepared to speak about the pieces as Wynberg had in fact transcribed many of them to suit Trakar’s vocal type. I’m not sure of the extent of their project or how it came about (perhaps it was addressed at the beginning), but I for one would like to know more about it. Anyone else attend this afternoon? Any more details?

There was a rough program laid out in advance, which didn’t seem to be followed. Translations were provided upon entry, but weren’t too useful to me as nothing was really announced, that I could hear in the back that is. Again, while I enjoyed the off-the-cuff style greatly, if it had been planned out slightly in advance, the audience could at least follow along with the texts.

Trakas’ performance once again was excellent. I believe that he knew every word he was singing. Naturally expressive and extremely comfortable on stage, Trakas is such a joy to watch and I think he finds great joy in performing. He was so gracious toward the audience, acknowledging the applause between each piece with a huge smile on his face. While he was reading off of music, you could tell it was more of a reference for him; he was in no way bound to the score. The language has such fluidity for singing and Trakas expressed it beautifully. Once again, a stellar performance put forth by this excellent baritone.

As a collaborative effort, there was a sense of ease between Trakas and Wynberg. I have no idea what their rehearsal timeline was, but they were able to just go with it and quite successfully. While I am not familiar with Spanish vocal repertoire, you could hear where the difficulty lies in the preparation and performance. The guitar has a lot of plucked chords, so a more disjointed melodic line, whereas the voice is quite lyrical, flowing, with lots of rubato, slides and trills. Not easy to keep together! The music was absolutely lovely and seemed to be just what people were looking for to end off the festival.

I hope that everyone has enjoyed their time at ChamberFest. I know that I have immensely. Until next year!

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