Page 10 -The Michigan Daily-Friday, November 6, 1987
I
Vocalist
Leslie
Guinn
is
surely irresistible
By David Hoegberg
For those who know Leslie
Guinn's singing from his recordings
and local appearances, tomorrow
night's recital of American songs at
the Kerrytown Concert House will
be a special treat. For those who
don't know this nationally acclaimed
baritone's work, consider this a
"must see" event. Guinn is a local
vocal treasure whose Ann Arbor
appearances are all too few.
You may have heard him in the
Ann Arbor Symphony's September
performance of Shostakovich's 13th
Symphony, a new work in Guinn's
repertoire. Or you may remember his
contribution to a stunning Britten
War Requiem in Hill Auditorium
last Spring. Or perhaps you have
heard Handel's Messiah in Detroit,
where Guinn has performed it for
three successive seasons with the
Detroit Symphony.
Leslie Guinn is Director of the
Division of Vocal Arts at the
University's School of Music, but
his responsibilities here don't
prevent him from appearing all over
the country. This season alone his
singing engagements have taken him
to New York, Pasadena,
Washington, and Milwaukee for
opera and orchestral performances.
Past credits include appearances with
the major orchestras of Chicago,
Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Houston,
Boston, and Baltimore.
Although his repertoire is wide,
Guinn always returns to American
music with a sense of familiarity and
respect. He says that his Texas
upbringing on country/western and
other popular music gave him an
instinctive feel for the American art
song, which differs from its
European counterparts not i n
difficulty nor the amount of vocal
training required, but in something
less tangible called "style."
Guinn has the style and the vocal
technique to make an American song
into a thing of exquisite beauty, as
he has demonstrated on several of his
recordings. Volume I of his Songs
of Stephen Foster, recorded with
mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, won
Stereo Review's Record of the Year
award. His recording of music by
American composers Samuel Barber
and George Rochberg with the
Concord String Quartet won a
Grammy nomination for Best
Chamber Music Record of 1983 and
was included in High Fidelity's list
of Best American Music on Record.
Tomorrow night's recital, then,
will be a rare opportunity to hear a
major artist in the most intimate of
settings, singing music to which he
is ideally suited. In choosing music
of Foster, Ives, Copland, and
Rochberg for this recital, Guinn
admits he is selecting personal
favorites.
"I'm enjoying myself," he says.
"The program ranges from the
stalwart patriotic songs of Foster, to
the parodies of Ives, to the challenge
of Rochberg, to 'Charlie Rutledge,'
which is comic and sad and a little
bit of everything."
Guinn claims that it is a very
accessible program, designed for
maximum enjoyment for all types of
listeners. The songs will also be
punctuated by Guinn's illuminating
comments. "Who can resist, say, the
beautiful simplicity of 'Beautiful
Dreamer' done exactly as Foster
wrote it, for performance in
somebody's parlor?" Don't try to
resist. Enjoy.
Leslie Guinn will be accompanied
by pianist Deanna Relyea. The
recital is at 8 p.m. at Kerrytown
Concert House, 415 N. Fourth
Avenue. Tickets are $8 and $12, and
reservations are suggested. Call 769-
2999 for further details.
a
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Life During Wartime
By Lucius Shepard
Bantam
$7.95/paperback
In only his second novel Lucius
Shepard has created an extraordinary
story of one man's journey through
Hell and back, in the form of Central
American battlefields. Picture the
insanity and chaos of Vietnam; add
-government prescribed drugs,
conventional nuclear weapons, and
literal psychological warfare in the
form of mental death rays - what is
produced is Life During Wartime.
Shepard describes the war as "the
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Mingolla, an ordinary American, has
his mind set solely on surviving and
returning home as soon as possible
from the horrors of the Central
American war. His plans are changed
when he meets and falls obsessively
in love with a Guatemalan woman
named Deborah. It is this love which
acts as David's last anchor to sanity:
"In the blackness behind his lids he
began to see explosive flashes of
light, and within those flashes were
images of the assault... He blotted
them out with the image of
Deborah, for as long as he could."
Reality and the drug-induced
dream world David is placed in begin
to intermingle as he is recruited into
the top secret Psi-Corps and receives
as his first assignment the orders to
kill Deborah. David realizes that his
life and mind has been manipulated
by a power which may be using the
war as a cover for its ultimate aims.
At first the book appears to be a
simple warning against the United
States' current policies in the area.
Regardless of his intent, Shepard's
ability to illuminate those horrors of
war that exist less obviously in our
own lives makes it a success. The
battles become less between two
armies or nations than between the
two opposing forces of good and evil
that exist within everyone.
Shepard's lyrical descriptions,
which cover and dissect every aspect
of a scene, create another world:
"Glaring overhead lights shined up
the grease spots on the plastic
tablecloths and made the uneven
thickness of the yellow paint appear
to be dripping. The concrete floor
was freckled with dark stains that
Mingolla discovered to be the
remains of insects." Shepard mixes
this microscopic observation and a
surrealistic quality to produce a book
which all-too closely resembles an
actual nightmare in the reader's
mind.
Life During Wartime could be
compared with the film Apocalypse
Now or to what the Heart of
Darkness would have been like if
Conrad had written it while on
hallucinogens. But through its
innovative qualities, Life During
Wartime stands alone as a book that
will be remembered many days after
the last page is read.
-John Davey
Michigan Daily
ARTS
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