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Pop artists you'd like to hear singing classical

windhoek

The Phoolosopher
Two female artists I'd like to give classical singing a go are Beyoncé and Bjork. Their timbres do it for me and each has a voice that can vary considerably in style, subtlety and range. Which pop/rock artists would you like to hear singing classical?

p.s. I'd love to hear Beyoncé sing Urlicht but I wouldn't let Bjork anywhere near it - I give her an opera song that requires a bravura performance, I think that would be more up her street.
 
I just had a listen to Renée singing Bjork on Youtube and as Col. Kurtz says, the horror... the horror :eek:

I'll admit, Bjork tackling classical might be an acquired taste - perhaps a whole new genre in and of itself - but like Beyoncé, I think she has the potential to pull it off (in her own unique way of course) :)

Interestingly though, singers that are professionally trained don't always do it for me when they sing pop/rock. I didn't enjoy Charlotte Church's foray and Michael Ball's 'popular' stuff doesn't do it for me either.
 
Leonard Cohen singing Strauss Four Last Songs and The Residents performing Wagner’s Ring Cycle. That will do for starters, though I understand the former has some logistical issues.

PS To the OP, have you heard Bjork’s Gling-Glo? It was an early Icelandic-only release and is her fronting an Icelandic jazz band. It is very good IMO, arguably her best album.
 
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Two female artists I'd like to give classical singing a go are Beyoncé and Bjork. Their timbres do it for me and each has a voice that can vary considerably in style, subtlety and range. Which pop/rock artists would you like to hear singing classical?

p.s. I'd love to hear Beyoncé sing Urlicht but I wouldn't let Bjork anywhere near it - I give her an opera song that requires a bravura performance, I think that would be more up her street.

How different we are. I can’t stand Beyoncé’s singing, or Bjork either.
 
Leonard Cohen singing Strauss Four Last Songs and The Residents performing Wagner’s Ring Cycle. That will do for starters, though I understand the former has some logistical issues.

PS To the OP, have you heard Bjork’s Gling-Glo? It was an early Icelandic-only release and is her fronting an Icelandic jazz band. It is very good IMO, arguably her best album.

I didn't know about Gling-Glo but a quick listen suggests it's right up my street. It's Bjork, Tony, but not as we (normally) know her!
 
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The American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley had a superb voice. He died in a drowning accident in the 1990s.

Here he is with a sublime rendition of Benjamin Britten's arrangement of the Corpus Christi Carol.

 
Right on cue for this thread we can have Roger Waters, of that Pink Floyd, narrating Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale. I’ve no idea what he’s done to it or any context, but normally this work fits on a single piece of vinyl, so I guess it is extended/reworked or something.
 
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One or two rock lead singers can do a passable classical voice. I think it was Ian Gillan (??) I remember on a TV program many years ago showing that he was a pretty versatile talent.

But many rock & pop singers just don't have the training to be make a decent job of classical. Many have a nice voice with limited range - Madonna is coming to mind...lovely but limited. On the other hand Annie Haslam (Renaissance) could do anything, and very well too. But I read somewhere that she had been a classically trained singer.
 
Jimmy Somerville may make a fist of something classical l would imagine- he has a high pitched voice.
 
I’m coming close to believing that it should be illegal for pop singers to sing anything but pop, classical singers to sing anything but classical, and jazz singers to sing anything but jazz. This is largely based on the absolute horror of witnessing Kiri Te Kanawa murdering some jazz standards with an absolutely stellar group of jazz musicians on a South Bank Show. A whole hour of prime arts tv wasted on this ridiculous vanity project, at a time when real jazz was as rare as hens’ teeth on tv. Aretha’s Nessun Dorma is another example of why it shouldn’t be allowed - and I regard her as the probably greatest singer of the last century. June Tabor’s Some Other Time showed that great folk singers can’t do jazz, either. And do I have to remind everyone about Sting’s Dowland folly?

YMMV, of course.
 
Possibly one of the most heinous crimes was committed by Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanawa on West Side Story, for a start the accents were wrong, but the sound of fully developed operatic voices pretending to be love lorn teenagers was just bobbins. What was Lenny thinking?

A much better crossover, although possibly slightly less of a mismatch in terms of material is the Porgy and Bess recording featuring Willard White.

Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (Home of Opera) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M34WM5V/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

Great versions by Ella and Louis
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0000046Z5/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

And of course Miles Davis https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000024F6M/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21
 
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The American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley...
Or indeed his Dad, Tim.
"Leontyne Price attended a concert during the [Starsailor] supporting tour and told Buckley, "Boy, I wish they were writing things like that for us opera singers," to which Buckley responded, "Well, do what I did; get your own band."
 
I can't think of any pop vocalist that has the technique to do what an opera singer does, which is to fill a large hall with difficult music covering a wide range of frequencies, and to do so for prolonged periods of time without any amplification whatsoever. These people are vocal athletes.
I can't think of any opera singer that can rock properly. Ms Fleming is one of the better ones, and she doesn't rock.
 


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