Singer reigns at Grant Park

Dawn Upshaw helps music festival crowd forget about weather

By John von Rhein

Tribune music critic

Published June 16, 2002

"I don't know if this was what you were hoping for," Dawn Upshaw told the rain-depleted audience shivering under umbrellas Friday night at the Petrillo Music Shell for the opening concert of the 68th Grant Park Music Festival.

The singer may have underestimated her own popularity and the fortitude of the Grant Park public. They have been known to endure far worse weather to catch free symphonic concerts under the stars in one of America's great urban settings.

Neither a persistent drizzle nor cold winds sweeping across the lakefront could stay the Grant Park Orchestra or Carlos Kalmar (beginning his third season as principal conductor) from making the soloist or her audience feel welcome. Indeed, the performers, high and dry inside the bandshell, applauded us music-loving stalwarts for sticking it out to the soggy end.

Against all odds, Upshaw came, sang and conquered.

Grant Park has a good sound system and it treated Park Forest's gift to the world of opera and song with all due respect. Her clear soprano and sincere, unaffected manner were well suited to the vocal repertoire--selections from Joseph Canteloube's "Songs of the Auvergne" and American musical songs by Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein.

Such lighter fare was eminently suitable for a Grant Park opening. Those who want to hear Upshaw tackle more serious music later this summer are urged to follow her to Ravinia, where she will present songs by Osvaldo Golijov, and to Santa Fe, where she will take part in the U.S. premiere of Kaija Saariaho's opera "L'Amour de loin," Robert Spano conducting.

If any vocal artist can magically transport an audience from cold and wet Chicago to the warm and sunny Auvergne region, it's her. Upshaw sang seven of Canteloube's folk song settings--trivial texts about shepherdesses, sheep and cuckoos, dressed up in delicious orchestrations. She sustained "Bailero" at a languid tempo with superb breath control and a seamless line. As for her diction, you would have sworn the French Auvergne dialect was her mother tongue.

Those listeners who refused to seek shelter before the second half were rewarded with a mini-travelog of Broadway. No living American singer has done more to give crossover a good name. Upshaw made something sweet and touching of both "My Ship" (from Weill's "Lady in the Dark") and "Somewhere" (from Bernstein's "West Side Story"). And she got the drop on Ravinia's Sondheim celebration with her delectable renditions of two gems from forgotten Sondheim shows--"There Won't Be Trumpets" and "What More Do I Need?"

Too bad the miserable weather forced the singer to restrict her encores to only one song. She lavished such caring attention on Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me" that even the clouds over Butler Field stopped their mischief momentarily.

Kalmar and the orchestra gave the singer cushiony accompaniments and rounded out the concert with bright, bouncy selections by Berlioz, Ravel and Copland. Apart from a faltering trumpet in "Alborada del gracioso" and a horn crack in the "Billy the Kid" Suite, the playing sounded alert, full-bodied of sound and pointed of rhythm.

On with the season!