Daily News Channel
REVIEW: A Gala Evening: Bryn Terfel (bass- baritone), New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tecwyn Evans Michael Fowler Centre, May 3 Bryn Terfel, besides being one of the great bass baritones gracing the opera stages of today, is a larger than life character in all senses of the word.
As more than a billion people worldwide watched on, the nervous gulps lasted for a full 21 seconds on a Los Angles stage. The left hand fidgeted around the lectern, the right hand firmly grasped the prize.
Call it the Goldilocks military plan: Not too much, not too little, not too unilateral, not too American.
It’s a clear, chilly winter day in Portland, Ore., and Colin Meloy, leader of the Decemberists, is expounding on folk chanteuse Gillian Welch’s guest vocals on their new album, The King Is Dead. “No country-rock record would be complete without some backing vocalist with a clear and distinct voice,” he says, citing Nicolette Larson’s singing on Neil Young’s Comes a Time and Emmylou Harris’ work with Gram Parsons.
Lunch at the site of the future Ramu nickel and cobalt mine in the remote hills of Papua New Guinea is a hurried affair, food shoveled into eager mouths. But the menu is as divided as the two distinct groups of workers squatting in the heat, swatting away flies and filling their bellies before their nine-hour, seven-day-a-week shifts begin again.