Longtime collaborators launch tri-city tour Jan. 29 on campus
JANUARY 25, 2019 BY
Amanda Johnston, UM associate professor of music, is set to perform songs of love with mezzo-soprano Tracelyn Gesteland on Tuesday (Jan. 29) at Nutt Auditorium. Photo by Robert Jordan/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services
Valentine’s Day may not be until Feb. 14, but pianist Amanda Johnston and mezzo-soprano Tracelyn Gesteland will perform a program all about love, entitled “Mots d’amour,” or “Words of Love,” Jan. 29 at the University of Mississippi.
“We’re performing songs about various facets of love,” said Johnston, UM associate professor of music. “Expected love, romantic love, lost love, love of country and even love of reading!”
The duo will perform works spanning the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries by Guastavino, Chaminade, Viardot, Heggie and Bucchino. From tender to mournful, from traditional to contemporary, from songs of lost love to unexpected odes to first ladies – this program explores the wide variety of emotion, subject and nuance one might imagine when thinking of love in its broadest sense.
The recital is at 7:30 p.m. in Nutt Auditorium. Tickets, priced at $10 for adults and $5 for students and children, are available from the UM Box Office, 662-915-7411, or at the door.
Gesteland is an opera, concert and recital singer who performs throughout the United States and Canada. She is associate professor of voice and opera at the University of South Dakota, where she holds the Walter A. and Lucy Yoshioka Buhler Endowed Chair.
Besides teaching and performing at Ole Miss, Johnston is on faculty at Musiktheater Bavaria and the Druid City Opera Workshop. She is a frequent speaker on the topic of her latest work, “English and German Diction for Singers: A Comparative Approach,” in its second edition.
Besides the Oxford performance, Johnston and Gesteland also will perform “Mots d’amour” in South Dakota and Texas.