PORT ANGELES — Songs from “West Side Story” and from the Renaissance era will be part of a one-time-only performance by tenor and voice teacher Michael Chipman tonight (Monday evening).
Chipman, a former student of Port Angeles High School choir director Jolene Dalton Gailey, is coming from Salt Lake City to sing in Port Angeles.
Admission is free to the 7 p.m. recital at First Presbyterian Church, 139 W. Eighth St., and the public is welcome.
Chipman, head of the voice program at Utah’s Westminster College, is a performer who has sung with the Lyric Opera of New York, Hawaii Opera Theatre and many other companies.
He is co-author of The Naked Voice: A Wholistic Approach to Singing and directs Westminster’s co-ed a cappella group SugarTown.
Gailey, with funding from the Port Angeles High School Choir Boosters, is bringing Chipman to work Monday and Tuesday with her choir, including soloists Beth Ann Brackett, MacKenzie Cammack, Nicholas Fritschler, Annika Pederson and Astrid Schick.
Together with Gailey at the piano, they will give Monday’s recital, something Chipman calls “a real thrill.”
“I’m especially excited to get to sing with my high school choir teacher,” he said, adding that Gailey and her husband, Doug, Port Angeles High’s band director, had a great influence on him back when he was a teenager.
Some 25 years ago, Chipman sang in the choir and played trombone in the band at Bingham High School in South Jordan, a suburb of Salt Lake City.
‘Lessons about life’
The Gaileys were teachers there before coming to Port Angeles and taught him about music and professionalism — “so many lessons about life,” he added, “that continue to serve me to this day.”
Then Jolene Dalton Gailey and Chipman “stumbled on each other on Facebook,” he said, and soon began planning his master classes and recital in Port Angeles.
Monday’s recital will bring “Sure on This Shining Night” by Samuel Barber, “Flow My Tears” by Renaissance composer John Dowland, songs by the French composers Gabriel Faure and Francis Poulenc, and Leonard Bernstein’s “Tonight” and “Somewhere” from “West Side Story.” Then there are three of Chipman’s favorite songs by Johannes Brahms, “music that fits my voice like a glove,” he said.
“These songs show where my passions are as a singer.
“They’re songs that really connect with my heart.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
