Nicholas Phan Launches 2017 with Fourth Album ‘Gods & Monsters’
By Francisco SalazarNicholas Phan will launch the New Year with his fourth solo album, “Gods & Monsters” for Avie Records.
The album features his frequent collaborator Myra Huang on piano. The recording sees Phan sing a wide-ranging program of German lieder inspired by fairy tales, traversing both familiar and lesser-known works by Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Beethoven, Schumann, Wolf and Mendelssohn.
According to Phan the recording was inspired by the young people and stated, “As more and more children have entered our lives, most notably my longtime recital partner Myra Huang’s two daughters and my niece, storytelling has become a greater part of our personal lives, leading us to this fun program of songs about various myths, legends and fairy tales. Almost all the great giants of the German Lieder repertoire are represented, and every song is one of these composers’ musically imaginative retellings of stories about various gods, monsters, witches, kings, knights and all sorts of other fantastical creatures.”
With the launch of the CD, “Gods & Monsters” will be Phan’s program when he makes his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall in February. His season will also include stops at Boston’s Isabella Gardner Museum, New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the Perelman Theater in Philadelphia.
Recently Phan curated and sang at the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago’s fifth annual Collaborative Works Festival and made his debut in Asia performing and recording Bach cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan in Kobe and Tokyo. He also sang the title role in Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” to acclaim in San Francisco.
Phan’s previous discography includes two celebrated collections of songs by Benjamin Britten and “A Painted Tale: a Pastiche Cycle of early English songs.”
“Gods and Monsters” will be released on Jan. 13.