Concert to mark Portia White
It’s fitting that Genius Child: Portia White at Town Hall, a Cecilia Concerts special presentation, will be staged in a church. American lyric coloratura soprano Harolyn Blackwell revisits the Nova Scotian’s Manhattan achievement Saturday, Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. in St. George’s Round Church.
“Of course, to be singing in a church is always such an honour and a great pleasure,” Blackwell said during a phone interview from her New York City home.
“Just like Portia, I started in a church. I think with so many artists, especially African American artists, we started in a church. That’s the first place where we really began to sing and perform and give honour to God and to our ancestors.
“The congregation in your community was there to support and uplift you.”
75 YEARS
This year marks 75 years since White made her New York
City debut at Town Hall. It was only after her success with this concert that she was permitted to sing in many previously racerestricted concert halls at home.
Paul Bowles, in the New York Herald Tribune in March 1944, wrote that “White, contralto, showed the public at her Town Hall debut Monday night that she not only has a magnificent vocal instrument, but that she also has sufficient musicianship and intelligence to do what she wishes with it.”
The Halifax concert will feature works by Scarlatti, Schubert and Brahms, as well as spirituals and text, but it will not be a simulation of White’s Town Hall program.
“Some of it will replicate it; others will be close to replication,” said Blackwell.
“For example, spirituals and some of her songs I will be singing. We haven’t chosen exactly the Schubert songs that she has performed; they’re Schubert songs that are familiar to me but in the context of the material that she presented for Town Hall.”
Blackwell will be accompanied by Texas pianist Daniel Zelibor, who, with a penchant for research, was also instrumental in bringing her to White’s attention.
“The last couple of years, I’ve been working on another lesser-known African American concert singer by the name of Sissieretta Jones.
“He said, ‘Have you ever heard of Portia White?’ I said, ‘No.’
“When he sent me the material I was like ‘Oh, my goodness. This is again another person I don’t know, another African American classical singer that I don’t know about. It sounds intriguing.’”
PORTIA
The sixth child of Izie and Rev. William White, Portia is said to have sung around the house growing up in Truro, then in the choir of Cornwallis Street Baptist Church in Halifax when her father became the minister, according to the Nova Scotia Museum.
White (June 24, 1911-Feb. 13, 1968) made her formal debut at the age of 30 at Toronto’s Eaton Auditorium in 1941, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.
Her recital at New York’s Town Hall, where she was the first Canadian to perform, is considered the pinnacle of her career. Now a venue for an eclectic range of performances, Town Hall was for decades a prominent classical venue.
“It was almost at the point that it was standard for a classical musician to appear there,” Blackwell said.
“My first New York hall debut was at Town Hall. How you come full circle.”
STUDYING HER STYLE
Recordings of White are scarce, but there is a scratchy version of an LP called Think on Me, which collected concert performances, available on YouTube.
Blackwell said she’s picked up a few things about White’s style.
“I was reading about her that she had this three-octave range. It must have been quite an impressive voice, to go all the way down and go all the way up like that, and the beauty and warmth of the voice.
“I gather that many of these African American classical singers had these amazing voices in respect to their range.
“They could go very high and at the same time could go very low, and yet there was always this consistency of warmth and beauty in the sound, an evenness in the sound.”
Blackwell began her career on
Broadway in the first revival of West Side Story. A little later, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
She performed the role of Clara in the Glyndebourne Festival Opera production of Porgy and Bess. Sir Simon Rattle conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the Grammy Award-winning recording of that production.
Blackwell hasn’t been to Nova Scotia but is looking forward to her visit and performing for an audience in White’s home province.
“I’m hoping that they are going to be very, very receptive, which I think they will be since she is a daughter of Halifax.”
IF YOU GO
Genius Child is presented by Cecilia Concerts as part of its 31st season, in partnership with the Nova Scotia Talent Trust and with assistance from the Halifax Ladies’ Musical Club, Arts Nova Scotia and the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.
Tickets ($37.50 general admission) are available at ceciliaconcerts.ca, by calling 902423-0143 and at the door, 2222 Brunswick St.