Russell Watson, the people’s tenor

Pop opera has a new star and he is a most unlikely one. He is young, only 27 years old. He is lean and tall with a boy band kind of smile. He is British, not Italian or Spanish. He has no fancy education. In fact he dropped out from high school at 16. He has worker roots and the only formal job training he ever received was from an engineering company where he was taught how to put nuts and bolts into a machine.

These days though Russell Watson spends a lot of his time with a vocal coach. That is when he is not performing in concert halls or singing in special shows or promoting his first album. It is titled The Voice and the legendary Frank Sinatra has no cause to turn somersaults in his grave. Watson has every right to be proud of his voice and those millions or so music lovers who have bought copies of the album will heartily agree.

Watson’s legend is also growing. The tale going around says that he was singing in a working men’s club when a customer requested for Nessun Dorma. The famous aria from Puccini’s Turandot had by then acquired a big following among the masses and was considered the unofficial theme song of the World Cup Finals. Watson usually sang power ballads and he had never done Nessun Dorma before. But he knew the song and he gave it a try. He got a standing ovation.

And because he did Nessun Dorma so well and he certainly cost a lot less than Pavarotti or Bocelli, he started to land singing gigs in soccer matches. These in turn went from local neighborhood games to the Wembley and finally to the European Cup Finals in Barcelona. By that time he had also picked up a tag or two. He had become known as "The Voice of Sport" because his singing usually opened soccer games. He was also called "The People’s Tenor" because of his working class background.

Recent times have seen classical tenors invading the realm of popular music with great ease and vice-versa, pop songs had also been getting the classical treatment. So there is nothing really new about Watson’s mixed repertoire in The Voice. What he brings to the songs though is a unique kind of pop sensibility that can never be acquired in any music conservatory. It is a cosmopolitan flair at home with both Puccini and Freddie Mercury. It comes from singing Meat Loaf covers in dingy bars and performing before impatient and at times rowdy soccer fans. It is the knowledge that a powerful voice can transcend music genres, language, backgrounds.

Included in The Voice, are Nella Fantasia from the movie The Mission, Amor Ti Vieta, Caruso, the Zucherro-Bono collaboration Miserere, Panis Angelicus, Non Ti Scordar Di Me, La Donna e Mobile, Saylon Dola with Maire Brennan of the group Clannad, Someone Like You with Cleopatra Higgins of the soul trio Cleopatra, Bridge Over Troubled Water, the Ultravox hit Vienna, Funiculi, Funicula, the Freddie Mercury composition Barcelona, (Friends Till the End) with Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays, and Nessun Dorma.

Isaac Stern passes away

Isaac Stern, one of the greatest violinists of his generation, passed away last Sept. 23 at 81. He died after having suffered from heart disease for several years and being in the hospital for more than a month. Stern, who was born in the Ukraine in 1920 came to the US of A as a baby. He is one of the most recorded musicians in history with more than 100 albums to his credit. He usually did 200 concerts a year and has performed in countless places all over the world including Iceland, Greenland, China and Jerusalem, although he maintained a boycott of Germany because of the Holocaust until three years ago.

Stern helped advance the careers of many famous musicians of today, like cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zuckerman. He is also known as the artist who saved the historic Carnegie Hall from being demolished when the Lincoln Center was being built during the ’50s. His music artistry on the violin opens the soundtrack of the movie version of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. He also played for John Garfield in the movie Humoresque. From Mozart to Mao, a documentary about his performing and teaching tour of China in 1979 won the Academy Award in 1980.