Charles Petzold

In April 2020, soon after the COVID lockdown, composer Jake Heggie and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton began asking their friends to jot down what they were missing most during the pandemic. From the many responses, they selected five — by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, Broadway legend Patti LuPone, Sister Helen Prejean (the subject of Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking based on her book), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who died several months later), and pianist, conductor, and writer Kathleen Kelly — and Heggie set them to music.

The result is a unique song cycle What I Miss the Most..., which received its east coast premiere recently at the Park Avenue Armory in two recitals by Jamie Barton accompanied on the piano by Jake Heggie before audiences of about 90 people. We saw the one on Sunday, November 21, with Patti LuPone also in the audience.

The setting of Joyce DiDonato’s poem is rhythmic and pounding; more lyrical for Patti LuPone, who was says “I’ve been given Time.” Sister Helen Prejean thought she’d have time for gardening and reading, but then remembered the incarcerated and wrote:

Guilt is not a bad thing.
It can be a sort of WD40
Greasing my moral gears to act:
Do something.
Do something!
DO SOMETHING!

I am fairly sure that this is the first time the product name “WD40” has been set to music, as I am also sure that the same is true for the term “virtual collaboration,” in the sense of creating a composite musical performance from remote locations. This is Ruther Bader Bindburg’s contribution:

One of the things I miss:
Music made by many in unison.
Virtual collaboration,
good as it is,
pales in comparison.

Jake Heggie has provided a wonderful setting with much repetition and an emphasis on the word “music.” For Kathleen Kelly’s contribution, Heggie has written a love song for two people communicating via computer screen.

This was one of several highlights of a wonderful recital, with much commentary provided by the charming Jamie Burton. The first half of the program featured “Music for a While” by Henry Purcell as enhanced by Benjamin Britten, three songs by Schubert (including a moving “Gretchen am Spinnrade"), five songs by women composers — an all-too-short sampling of Florence Price, Lili Boulanger, Nadia Boulanger, and Amy Beach — and three lieder by Brahms, who isn’t often represented in song recitals, although probably moreso than women composers.

Besides being a great singer with a rich lower range, Jamie Barton is a warm and friendly stage presence with an uninhibited gorgeous smile, chatting frequently with the audience and celebrating the return to live music. The second half of the concert was devoted to Jake Heggie song cycles, beginning with What I Miss the Most... and the witty two-song collection from 2000, Of Gods and Cats, and then a fascinating work from 2015 entitled Iconic Legacies: First Ladies at the Smithsonian.

Iconic Legacies is four songs with texts by Heggie’s longtime collaborator Gene Scheer inspired by objects at the Smithsonian, so that Eleanor Roosevelt sings of Marian Anderson’s mink coat, which the African American contralto wore when she sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 to an integrated audience of 75,000 people. There is a devastating setting where Mary Todd Lincoln speaks of her husband’s hat, worn when he was assassinated but also still adorned with a black band commemorting the death of their son Willie. Heggie has written a surprising light setting for Jackie Kennedy telling of the last Christmas card her husband signed, and then Barbara Bush sings about the Muppets.

For an encore, Jamie Barton sang Jake Heggie’s amazing mashup of Chopin’s Prelude No. 15 in D-flat Major with “It’s You I LIke” from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, quite appropriate for two lovers of Chopin, and a woman who has been an outspoken voice in advocacy of gay issues and body positivity.

We love Jamie Barton’s voice — both singing and in advocacy — and we love her.