Barbara Hannigan finds her inner John Zorn

Review from New York by Susan Hall:

John Zorn’s 70th birthday celebration continued in New York on November 16 with a concert of his music at Columbia Univeristy’s Miller Theater. One of his preferred collaborators, Barbara Hannigan, took to the stage in his songs.

Barbara Hannigan cooks in her down time. At the market, she seeks out ingredients she’s never seen before and about which she knows nothing. Hannigan is all about surprise and discovery. Her performances, as a singer and as a conductor, are a delicious brew, as daring and innovative as her cooking.

Although she had heard John Zorn recordings while she was in college, she met Zorn for the first time when she was premiering George Benjamin’s Written on the Skin in New York. They immediately hit it off.

Languishing unsung in his studio was Jumalattaret, a work for the voice which Zorn had written three years before. No one had tried to sing it. And, in fact, it appeared to be unsingable. All kinds of sounds slam each other: whispers, squeaks and gutterals mix at random. Who would write a piece like this? A composer who experiments with S&M in music?

Along came Hannigan, who is both completely protective of herself and her gifts and also very open and brave in her musical choices. She admits to having been a bit afraid of Zorn. Yet as she dug into Jumalattaret, one of the toughest things she’s ever done, she was finally able to make it hers. So there, John. Recently, she toured Jumalattaret in Europe with pianist Stephen Gosling.

Now Hannigan arrives in New York fresh from her debut as Cleveland Symphony conductor and she is immediately swept up in another Zorn birthday party. The pair may not have known each other forever, but it feels like they have. Perhaps because they are both a 1000 per cent committed to music. They are both willing to lay their art on the line of the seemingly impossible. They groove on each other.

Zorn likes the Miller because he trusts its director, Melissa Smey. He is one of her all-time favorite composers, honored with multiple composer portraits presented here. For this concert, Stephen Gosling accompanies at the piano and also participating are the JACK Quartet with Sai Hashimoto on percussion and Ikue Mori on electronics. Jorge Roeder, bass and Ches Smith, percussion join in.

Hannigan does not sing Jumalattaret, the work that sealed her relationship with Zorn. In the course of a little over an hour Hannigan sings Split the Lark (with the Dickensonian allusion to “finding the music”, Liber Loageth, Starcatcher, Ad eo,Quod and Pandora’s Box.

She is a fascinating performer. All singers want to move their hands and arms to draw the music out of their bodies. You can see them do this in practice and rehearsal. Such movements are commonly banned on stage. Hannigan always brings them along with her. She wonders why many people suggested she become a conductor. Yet watching her conduct herself as singer, with those gestures, you get part of the answer.

Hannigan tends to every detail, appearing as three different personas, one in an elegant black dress with slipping shoulder straps, then a yellow dress with graphic black images to honor the Mexican artist, Remedios Vara, and finally a swooping red robe suggesting an impending boudoir rendezvous.

Zorn breaks the fourth wall throughout the evening, leaping up from his seat two-thirds back in the orchestra and charging the stage to introduce and then express appreciation for the musicians.

The final song Zorn claimed as his first work, composed before Hannigan was born. Perhaps. Who cares? Like everything Zorn writes, it is a musical adventure on which he takes incomparable artists and the audience.