MUSIC REVIEW : Adkins Mixes Showmanship, Musicianship

Paul Spencer Adkins is not content to deliver an ordinary, ritualized art song recital. Nor is the on-the-go Chamber Music in Historic Sites your average, everyday concert series.

It seemed natural for the tenor and the presenter to form an alliance at the Trinity Baptist Church Sunday afternoon, producing a breezy, informal, thoroughly captivating concert. And the purists be damned.

Adkins, for one thing, insists upon talking to his audience--frequently, often humorously, using the instincts of a hammy showman. Having produced and starred in a recent PBS television special on the late tenor Roland Hayes, Adkins cited Hayes as the inspiration for the program. “He never sang on the opera stage because he was a leading black male,” Adkins intoned, exuberantly adding, “But because of him, I get to do what I do!”

What Adkins does is sing in a broad, wide tenor, with a grainy, almost baritonal timbre in the lower register that opens up at the top with some effort. It is not a beautiful voice, but he knew how to use it expressively and with considerable dynamic control in a pair of Schubert lieder and five excerpts from Schumann’s “Dichterliebe.”

At the risk of typecasting, one had to admit that Adkins produced his best work in the superb concluding medley of spirituals, where the locale finally was an apt match for the music. These were strongly characterized, deeply felt renditions, a near-ideal combination of ringing operatic timbre and idiomatic note-bending.

Adkins was also an amazingly generous recital partner, elevating his skilled pianist Jon Klibonoff almost to the role of co-soloist (though occasionally at the cost of being drowned out). A clever programmer, Adkins took full advantage of Klibinoff’s virtuosity, having him follow a freely adapted medley of tenor arias from Verdi’s “Rigoletto” with a flamboyantly florid rendition of Liszt’s Concert Paraphrase on “Rigoletto” to close the first half. Imagine letting your accompanist have the pre-intermission ovation.