Performance: Orlando
25-Oct-06
IT’S LIKE A MUSICAL OLYMPICS: Three Mo’ Tenors are vocal athletes who pull off the challenge.
By Jim Abbott
CONCERT PREVIEW
It’s like a musical Olympics
Three Mo’ Tenors are vocal athletes who pull off the challenge.
Jim Abbott
Sentinel Pop Music Critic
October 24, 2006
With two years under his belt, Ramone Diggs is a veteran among the cast members of Three Mo’ Tenors, the popular touring production that showcases African-American operatic singers in musical realms outside opera.
Diggs is part of a musical family now, but when he first auditioned he wasn’t so sure about the show — which returns to Orlando on Saturday for a second benefit performance for the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League.
“I had reservations,” he says by phone from his home in Philadelphia. “It’s very different, and the opera world is not the most forgiving when it comes to doing other things outside of opera.”
Although Diggs, 30, occasionally misses the challenges of pure opera, he still enjoys his work with Three Mo’ Tenors. More important, the concept has become a big hit with audiences, simultaneously opening the world of opera to pop fans and introducing classical ears to the contemporary R&B sounds of acts such as R Kelly.
The program begins with arias such as “La Donna E Mobile” from Guiseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto then segues into swing, blues, Motown-era pop and modern hits. Musical styles are tailored to the individual talents of two touring casts, and no genre is off-limits, although country and hip-hop have yet to find niches.
“We haven’t really found the people who can do that well,” says Willette Murphy Klausner, the show’s producer for the past five years. “Our prerequisite for doing any style of music is that if we can’t find something the guys can do effectively that would approximate the genre, we don’t do it.”
More than singing
Klausner says the most challenging part of the production is finding operatic tenors who are flexible enough to embrace pop music and the show’s choreography requirements.
“There’s not a lot of classically trained African-American tenors,” Klausner says. “Then to ask them to do seven other musical styles well, and on top of that ask them to manage some choreography, to be able to move; it’s very, very difficult.”
Choreography was a big hurdle for Diggs, who will be performing in Orlando with fellow tenors Phumzile Sojola and Kenneth Alston.
“I had to work on movement,” he says. “I just wasn’t used to doing anything that required any dancing. For me to get it to look decent, I have to go home and practice. It doesn’t come second nature.”
Diggs expects, however, that the experience will be beneficial when he does return to operatic productions, which increasingly call for physical movement as well as singing. Likewise, other cast members say that Three Mo’ Tenors is broadening their musical knowledge, in the same way that it does for the audience.
Hitting the road with Ray
Sojola, 36, is a native of South Africa who completed his college music education in the United States. One of the newest cast members, he had never been exposed to the blues, for instance.
“There are different ways to interpret the songs,” he says. “Some of the styles, like the blues, they require certain sounds. You don’t sing it the same way you sing ‘La Donna E Mobile.’ You’re not required to use all of your instrument, but you explore the colors of the voice.
“That has been challenging, and it has been a great learning experience,” says Sojola, who developed an appreciation for Ray Charles after watching Jamie Foxx in Ray.
“I’ve learned to appreciate what all these people do. When you’re listening to John Lee Hooker and Ray Charles, it’s like they are talking to you. I never listened to the blues before, but now I do. I can’t say I’ve grasped it 100 percent, but in 10 months, I’m better than I was when I began.”
In venturing into such music, Diggs says that operatically trained singers “go partially on instinct.”
“I don’t know anybody that’s truly a master of all styles because I don’t know if it’s possible,” he says. He has learned to embrace the challenge, though.
“It’s like somebody trying to run a long distance. You run in a certain way, and you don’t steer far from that. In this show, it’s like you’re being asked to do the decathlon, but you’re not a decathlete.”
Jim Abbott can be reached at 407-420-6213 or [email protected].
Copyright © 2006, Orlando Sentinel | Get home delivery – up to 50% off