At the River

Remembering Jubilant Sykes

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American baritone Jubilant Sykes passed away on December 8 at the age of 71. He was the victim of an apparent domestic homicide. A classically trained, Grammy-nominated vocalist, Sykes drew on gospel, jazz and folk influences. He collaborated with a wide array of artists including: Julie Andrews, Renée Fleming, Josh Groban, and Brian Wilson, and appeared on “such diverse stages as the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Arena …

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Old American Songs

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Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs are full of ghosts. The collection of folk melodies Copland arranged in the early 1950s, at the request of Benjamin Britten, evokes memories of, and nostalgia for, the distant past. It’s easy to get a similar feeling taking in the small slices of rural American landscape visible in brief glimpses from a moving car…an old dilapidated barn, a picturesque village church, the leafy solitude of an obscure roadside cemetery… The …

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