Performance: Boston, MA
01-Mar-02
THREE MO’ TENORS OFFER MUCH MO’ THIS TIME AROUND
By Richard Dyer
Three Mo’ Tenors has been playing to deliriously happy audiences across the country. They’ve learned to work together and give the public a sensationally good time.
The program showcases three vibrant personalities and an issue-the difficulties that African-American men face in the entertainment business, and particularly the classical music world. No African- American male singer has broken through the glass ceiling the way African-American women did 40 years ago, or the way Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte did in popular music.
But Three Mo’ Tenors isn’t a sermon, it’s a terrific entertainment that is all about music, singing, and talent; it celebrates the versatility that the African-American tenor has had to cultivate, the virtue he has made ofnecessity. The music ranges through opera, show tunes, jazz, blues, soul, gospel, and spirituals; the three tenors sing music associated with everyone from Luciano Pavoratti to Gladys Knight.
There’s a lively band under the direction of Joseph Joubert, an uninhibited singing-dancing ensemble of four, and a spirited gospel choir recruited locally, the snappy direction and choreography is the work of producer Marion J. Caffrey. One might criticize a few arrangements and the erratic, intrusive amplification, but no one left the Shubert disappointed. It was an evening that made you want to burst into song yourself.