Classical Artists-QAmbassador
Nathan Granner-Tenor
"As an indie classical artist, I've been able to sing in some crazy-cool towns and venues... with varying degrees of grandeur.
First off, as my heart is in Kansas City, our new homage to my art form, The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is something of which I am deeply proud. With its two performance spaces, The Muriel Kauffman Theatre and Helzberg Hall, the designers of this almost half billion dollar building have hit a sweet spot in acoustic engineering and sheer beauty.
The Muriel Kauffman Theatre is like driving a Bentley. Go over a curb and hit a stop sign in a Bentley and you just shrug poshly and smugly think, I still look amazing. You can have a toad in your throat the size of Waterloo and the theater will still make you sound at least like a demi-god.
The Helzberg concert hall, built for the KC Symphony is like driving a McLaren Supercar. Take one of these for a spin and one wrong step, you've just destroyed not only a stop sign, but you have also clipped a house and just destroyed one of the mast amazing pieces of machinery known to humanity. You really have to know your instrument to be effective in a space like this, but if you DO have technique, you have the opportunity to reach some higher state of spiritual transferral.
My other pick though would be hmm, venue AND town, hunh? ...Hmm.
I think Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York is a particularly fine choice for a number of reasons. The National Baseball Hall of Fame, James Fenimore Cooper, Prehistoric Ferns, Cherry Valley, Lake Otsego is really a fine choice. I did my first professional recital there as a young artist apprentice and sang chorus in their season. This was Paul Kellogg's first year as Artistic Director of both Glimmerglass and City Opera. Among the stellar casts, stars were born that year. Anthony Dean Griffey as Lenny in Carlisle Floyd's faithful adaptation of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Margaret Lloyd jumping out as chorus into the starring role of Curley's Wife and the applause at the end of each performance... was rock star. Francesca Zambello (now Artistic Director at Glimmerglass) directing Christine Goerke, Nathan Gunn and Bill Burden in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Phyllis Pancella in a Chris Alden L'italiana in Algeri... Isabel Bayrakdarian...
Such a magical time, where we young artists worked our butts off. In Cherry Valley where we youthful performers lived and loved there was the amazing local hangout, that anyone would deeply appreciate, Alex and Ika Restaurant. ABBA on the jukebox, dart boards and a great beer selection in the back kept us alive and in good spirits during the night, but as a four star restaurant in the front, Alex and Ika was a place where one could spend morning, noon, evening and night, and never get enough of their special cuisine and their incredibly warm hospitality.
A truly great town and a great opera destination."
Operatic tenor, Nathan Granner is recognized throughout the world as a generative, solo and collaborative artist. He is also one of the Sony/BMG Masterworks artists, The American Tenors. Granner is a uniquely gifted artist. On one hand, with leading roles such as Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte, Tamino in The Magic Flute and Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly, Granner is every bit the Operatic Tenor. His voice is of that rare breed of tenors - heroic, vulnerable, refined and unpretentious. Yet beyond this, Granner’s intense exploration of his voice has taken him from pop to authentic Flamenco to classic Turkish and has even led him further to study throat-singing with a Tibetan Monk.
