Sunday Offering

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From the YouTube information:

“A Simple Song” is a hymn song from the musical theatre work composed by Leonard Bernstein with text by Bernstein and additional text and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.

This Version is performed by Czech singer Jakub Hübner and it’s contained on Hübner’s album “Jakub Hübner” (2017).

Piano: Daniel Wunsch
Flute: Kateřina Macourková
Mix & mastering: Jakub Hübner
Photo: Denisa Grossová Photography
Graphic and video design: Jakub Hübner

6 thoughts on “Sunday Offering”

  1. Lovely! I’m a huge fan of Bernstein’s, in all of his many roles, and have recently been following his 1973 Harvard lectures, “The Unanswered Question” on dvd for the umpteenth time- what a polymath he was. His centenary falls in May, and Sony/CBS and Deutsche Grammophon are reissuing many of his recordings on cd and dvd.

    It’s good to see that “Mass”, from which “A Simple Song” is taken, has been rehabilitated after being slated when new in 1971. Ten years ago his former pupil, the (still unusually) female conductor Marin Alsop recorded it; the part of the Celebrant (who sings “A Simple Song”) was taken by a black baritone by the wonderful name of Jubilant Sykes.

    • What a great name! I’d love to hear it. The part is usually taken by a tenor, iirc.

      The politics in “Mass” are somewhat dated by now; the underlying suppositions have become more perverse and polymorphous than they were back in Bernstein’s day.

      • Bernstein was famously a “limousine liberal”. NYC is still full of them.

        I found Jubilant Sykes…if you dare enter Paris, he’s there in March, right around the vernal equinox.

        Here’s “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0KL_vBct_4
        ———————————

        I listened to a number of his songs. A baritone with *range*…thank you.

        Maybe sometime I’ll feature John Musto’s “Litany” sung by Sykes. But not today – there is a frozen layer over everything and it is a very grey February Sunday outside.

        • Lovely, thanks. Lenny was perhaps a “limousine liberal”, but also a staunch supporter of Israel from the start.

          Living in London, Paris holds no fears for me! ( hope not famous last words).

          Marin Alsop’s recording of “Mass”, with Sykes, is on the budget label Naxos.

          • Somewhere, I have the original release. But my CDs are mostly packed away…

            Here’s the wiki

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_(Bernstein)

            As you can see, it had mixed reviews. My review, in the form of a lecture I was asked to give to a group of nuns on retreat (yes, that was definitely another life), was also mixed. The main character, the priest, was of a type I met too often after Vatican II – adolescent, confused, and demanding. He’d have made a good snowflake.

            An example of this was perhaps the Berrigan Brothers…Phillip, a Josephite priest, was more likable than Daniel (a Jesuit). The latter, a much more ascetic and intellectual person, lived longer, though. Proving something or other.

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