Double Grammy-Winner J’Nai Bridges wows WashU in recital

Fresh off a fêted “Samson et Dalila” at Seattle Opera, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges graced the Washington University Great Artists series with her star power, this January 29th. Her program of art songs by Johannes Brahms, Maurice Ravel, Manuel De Falla, and John Carter perfectly suited her maturing instrument and afforded her countless opportunities to unify vivid storytelling with her rich, velvety sound, ably complemented by Mark Markham at the piano.

Impressively, WashU’s still-new (2017/18-) Great Artists Series has immediately drawn some big names in Classical music, including two leading mezzo-sopranos prior, Susan Graham (2018), and Saint Louis favorite Tamara Mumford (2019). Two-time (yes) Grammy-winner J’Nai Bridges kicked off the 22/23 season in her first local appearance; hopefully Opera Theatre or the Saint Louis Symphony will someday find a way to arrange a second.

In the 21C Classical music business, at least in the USA, programming of opera and Lieder singers in recital has dwindled sharply. I’d previously heard Bridges perform live only in large opera houses (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Metropolitan), or outdoors and amplified. While she can fill those big auditoriums sufficiently, the more intimate confines of the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall made me believe her instrument larger than I had before. Some singers are relatively easy to record in a manner that makes them sound—more or less—as they do live. But Bridges is a “you have to hear her live” singer, as I learned in 2019, from first hearing her Metropolitan Opera debut as Nefertiti in “Akhnaten” in the house, and then an HDcast in a movie theater two weeks later. In her duet with Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Akhnaten, the telecast sounded like two good singers doing their jobs well; but live, the duet was breathtaking, viscerally thrilling. So too she would prove in this concert.

The brief program consisted of four sets of songs, two either side of intermission. To start, three Brahms Lieder, in reverse chronology from the 1870s to the 1850s, all textually concerned with sight and perception. “Dein blaues Auge” (Opus 58 № 8) offered restrained power, and the warmth required by Brahms as the speaker imagines the beloved’s blue eyes restoring their health. A contrast appeared in “Die Mainacht” (Opus 43 № 2), which begins lower and therefore more in Bridges’ strength; her signature roles, Carmen and Dalila, sport relatively low tessituras. With several ‘und’s and the phrase “von Busch zu Busch,” I was reminded how beautifully she can shape an /u/ vowel, and the punctuation of the last line, “die Wang,” the speaker’s cheek, down which one tear flows, blossomed with cheeky roundness. The Brahms set concluded with “Von ewiger Liebe” (Opus 43 № 2, “Eternal Love”), featuring her healthy chest voice, refreshing in this era when many singers have been instructed not to use it. This last song gave her a broader storytelling opportunity, as she communicated the speaker moving first from a tentative attempt to calm an agitated lover, then to gaining her rhetorical footing mid-address, and finally to a convicted assertion that their love, unlike metal that can be forged or reforged, cannot be altered or changed at all—more of an operatic arc than the first two Lieder.

We moved to the twentieth century, for the duration, with Ravel’s “Shéhérazade” (1903)—herself a storyteller. European composers’ orientalism seems perhaps less flagrant when performed by an African American singer, but the first song, “Asie” qualifies as literal cultural tourism—an itinerary about most of the Asian continent, which Bridges rendered with authentic appreciation of Asia as a panoply of human existence writ large. Fresh off Saint-Saëns in Seattle, French fit her even better than German. Again, we enjoyed an operatic flair in these chansons; when the speaker admires “Qui du seul mouvement de leur doigt qui se penche / Accordent vie ou mort au gré de leu désir” (those who with a crook of the finger dispense life or death on a whim), or she celebrates executions of innocents (!), the finality of Bridges’ diction recalled Turandot and other queenly operatic dispensers of force. When Sheherazade longs to see velvet raiment, one regarded Bridges’ couture (more on that later). “La flûte enchantée” changed tone nicely, her voice softening at the first line “L’ombre est douce” (the shade is soft), merging with the diaphanous texture of Markham’s keyboard. Finally, in “L’indifférent,” she lightened her instrument, tracing the delicate features of the androgynous beloved. She floated an enchanting pianissimo on the imperative “entre!” and her voice wafted away, as does the beloved at the song’s end.

After a brief interval, she returned with Manuel de Falla’s “Siete canciones populares españolas” (1914-15). She displayed great interpretive range in these seven, sampled from different regions of the Iberian peninsula. Beginning with a sassy tone, she rued less the stain on the fabric in “El paño moruno” (The Moorish cloth) than its damaged market value. Her plummy middle register resonated in “Seguidilla Murciana,” with an authoritative take on the “glass houses” proverb addressed to an inconstant lover. “Asturiana” was lachrymose and serene, and contrasted by the fun of “Jota,” in which her sensual delivery playfully punctuated the song’s surprise ending, where one realizes the speaker is probably self-defenestrating from their lover’s mother’s house. Each of Bridges’ paralinguistic gestures landed well, rocking her shoulders just so in “Nana” (Lullaby), with fine dynamic control. The arresting use of chest voice returned in the sixth song, especially at the word “Madre.” And “Polo” closed the set in the mode of duende, Markham’s hammering accompaniment augmenting the trancelike vocals.

Bridges has championed African American composers, no small task in the often hostilely Eurocentric spaces of Classical music. No work could be more appropriate to select for this concert than “Cantata for Voice and Piano” by John Daniels Carter (1932-81), born in Saint Louis. Opera’s queen of queens, living legend Leontyne Price (1927-) sang the premiere at DAR Constitution Hall in 1959. The work expertly marries African American spirituals in modal tonalities, with a baroque form, titled movements like a Bach partita—Prelude, Rondo, Recitative, Air, Toccata. Reimagined, the spirituals appear in the last four. Bora Na’s DMA thesis (2012) explores the musical language in great detail; suffice it to say, the tonalities are complex and the rhythms varied, a rich composition. “Prelude” gave Markham a solo chance to carry over the driving energy in the keyboard from the last De Falla song. In “Rondo,” Bridges moved into head voice more for “Peter Go Ring Dem Bells,” some brightness at the top. With “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” in the “Recitative” movement, Carter’s lightly dissonant arrangement was tonally “further from home” than most accounts you’ll hear, musicalizing displacement and indeed evoking diaspora. On the word “gone,” Bridges scooped. I thought this stylistically apt, because in context this affect—though disadvised in vocal coaching—recalled Mme Price, who could 100% get away with it. In the fourth movement, “Air,” Bridges lent an ecstatic, sacramental gravity to the second half of “Let Us Break Bread Together.” And the cantata’s “Toccata” closed the work with a joyful, triumphant “Ride On King Jesus,” her voice powerful, and secure. Saint Louis needed to hear this work, and the connection to Price resonated.

After a spirited ovation, Bridges encored her most famous character’s most famous aria, the Habanera (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”). Carmen’s descending scale is an erotic invitation, in French opera’s idiom, and it was interesting to see how she performed this old standard when unencumbered with a stage director’s concept. Bridges played competitive basketball, and directors seem to enjoy leveraging her stature to contest Don José physically—frankly, “Carmen” works better if the mezzo could plausibly defend herself against the tenor’s onslaught. This however proved a softer Habanera than her takes of late in San Francisco and Cincinnati.

That harmonized with her presentation. In 2023, one generally should refrain from commenting on women’s clothing at their workplace. But this was a J’Nai Bridges recital. Emerging as if from a Vogue cover, she glided onstage atop a handsome pair of Louboutins. Her face and exposed shoulders arose from a Chihulyesque orchid of a gown, a fluted waist surrounded by regal purple cascades below, the undulating fabric tapering into a gathered sleeve above. A Grammy Awards of one, right here in University City, Missouri. In opera the word ‘diva’ circulates, in its best sense; truly, amongst us is a diva in J’Nai Bridges.

The Washington University Great Artists Series continues on Saturday, 4 March 2023 with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields and cellist Gary Hoffman.