In September, countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński released #LetsBaRock, a crossover album that experiments with baroque classics.

The album showcases Orliński joining forces with pianist Aleksander Dębicz, as well as Polish pop musicians Marcin Ułanowski and Wojciech Gumińki,  in a creation that synthesizes the sound of “the new baroque” with music by Händel, Purcell, Monteverdi, and Vivaldi. And throughout 2024, Orliński toured his album in an aim to bring together new audiences and traditional opera audiences.

OperaWire spoke to to the countertenor about the origin of the crossover album and the importance of touring albums in the pop style.

OperaWire: This album is very different and it’s a crossover with Baroque music. Where did this inspiration come from?

Jakub Józef Orliński: It’s completely different, and I wanted it to be different because I’ve already recorded solo albums which are really “I would say” nerdy. I discovered so many new pieces with Yannis Francois, my researcher and treasure hunter. We did so many “nerdy” work on Neapolitan composers and about topics like sacred music and operatic music.

So that’s why “anima sacra,” “anima eterna,” “Faccia d’amore” and “Beyond” with early baroque music, really digs into that “for my taste,” the best part of baroque music.

But during Covid, I started playing with Aleksander Dębicz, who is my really good friend and sincerely studied at the Frederick Chopin University in Warsaw. We were friends, but we never did anything together and during Covid, you could actually leave your apartment only for work.

So I started going to his apartment because he has a piano and we decided just play music and experiment with things. We started with cantatas by Bach and “Eia Mater” from Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, playing it very classically.

But as we experimented, we started developing some fun around certain pieces, like “Alla gente a Dio diletta” by Nicola Fago. And we played it because it was like a Disney love song. The harmonics in this piece, you don’t have to change much and it was like a pop song.

So we started diving into music like that.

And then, because we did some charity concerts on major Polish TV stations, we got an offer to be part of a very big festival in Poland. And it’s not a classical music festival. It’s the biggest festival for pop, hip hop, and rock music. They blend certain genres.

The festival does something every year during the summer and they have different stations in major cities and they invite major artists. The concerts are on a big stage and a small stage and they invited us to the big stage. We were kind of shocked because I remember being a teenager and going to those concerts for this festival. And suddenly, I’m invited with this weird obscure program. So we made a program which was 30-35 minutes long and we did it on an open stage with thousands of people. It’s like a Coachella with people holding beers and hot dogs. It’s super fun.

To play something with classical music that has a twist was even more exciting. Back then, which was two years ago, it was not yet what the album was. It was a little bit different.

Because it worked so well, we started playing some concerts here and there with this program.

And we were like, “Yeah, we want to record it.”

OW: Tell me about the recording process.

JJO: We wanted to record it in a place that would make sense for such a production. So we recorded it in the Church Studios in London, which is this legendary studio where Coldplay, the Beatles, and Rihanna have recorded. And the studio gives you another sort of level of inspiration.

So a lot of things actually got their origin over there, even though the program was ready. And the fun thing about this program is that at it’s core, there is improvisation. We improvised a lot.

So we tried to catch on this recording, something that is very unique for baroque music. So we captured this freedom of interpretation as well as ornamentation.

In a sense, going to different genres allowed us to explore the vibe of baroque music. We had the freedom and ornamentation but it was different for each genre because ornaments in jazz and rock are different. And it was fascinating to explore especially in live performances.

OW: How has the audience responded to the performances of this program?

JJO: We just finished a very big tour of this program which we started in Concertgebouw and Berlin Philharmonics. That was really stressful because we were bringing something that is a completely different concept of music, but also a different concept production-wise. It’s a pop production. Even though the website highlighted that it was an amplified concert. There were a lot of people from the Concertgebouw’s usual public that came because of my name. But, I have to say that I was shocked. I was actually expecting a lot of people to, like, stand up and leave. I genuinely thought that was gonna happen. There were only two people that left. But it was also fun to see that kind of reaction.

This concert is amplified and I sing with the microphone. To sing with a mic, you have to learn how to use the microphone because it’s a different way of performing. As a countertenor, you have to be aware that microphones grab voices differently. That’s why I say that when I record an album, I sing a little bit differently than when I perform it live because you have to deliver the sound, so you have to put your voice in a very resonant place.

But if you record something, the microphone sometimes catches the countertenor’s voice oddly and it’s very intense for the microphone. So you have to change it a little bit.

So that’s why when I am working with the microphone in a live performance, I always have to explore. And that’s why for these kinds of concerts when you have an amplified concert, you have something that is called the production rehearsals where rent a studio to have a mockup situation of a concert. In these mockups, you have all the cables and all the instruments and you test the balance and how you hear things. For this concert performance with headphones, for instance, I prefer the wedges and I performed with the wedges in front of me. I want the speakers that give me the best sound of the ensemble. But I have to say, I feel much more comfortable without the headphones.

What is beautiful about this program is that it highlights baroque music and makes people understand, especially some of the younger audience members, that this is cool. And at the same, we are inviting audiences to check out the original arrangement of the piece.

After this 12-concert tour, people were like, “Yeah, I want to check out the original Monteverdi piece.

OW: Have you found that younger audiences are attending the concerts? And do you think it’s bringing them to the original pieces?

JJO: I did find that there were a lot of young people and it was also amazing to find these two concepts because we in classical music operate in the concept of an institution inviting you, you come and you sing and that’s what happens. And in this concert tour, for the very first time in my life, I tried a different concept. We were invited to the Concertgebouw and we were invited for the Berlin Philharmonic and that was the old concept.

But in Poland, for the 10 concerts, we invested a ton of money to rent all of the concert halls. We rented and we created some sort of a business format that is used in pop music. We are not invited to sing somewhere, we rent a place, we organize, and we create the events.

So for these concerts, you decide, basically with the company, what’s going to happen. Are we selling the 360 degrees because, in certain places, you have the audience behind you? And then you have to decide on light designs and the sound system. Sometimes people have the sound system in the concert hall. But sometimes if you want to, for example, play 360, you have to bring your own stuff to make it possible for the people in the back to hear it the same way and not only, like if it was behind the wall.

So we had to make a lot of decisions and I’ve learned a lot about constructing this kind of event and how it works.

And it’s exciting and the majority of our concerts were 100 percent sold out because I don’t perform in Poland that often. So it was super nice to meet with my Polish public. And I did see a lot of young people and a lot of kids and parents with kids. But also my regular public and all of them were super excited about this. I don’t know if this was a step forward but it was quite extraordinary to experience.

OW: How big was the audience size? 

JJO: So it’s fun because we performed in NOSPR, one of the most famous concert halls in Poland. And that’s like 2,100 seats and it was sold out. So, of course, we had like 2,000 people.

Then you have Sala Ziemi, which is not a concert hall. It’s a congress hall made for conferences. So you have to make the acoustic. I would never sing a classical concert there without the amplification because it’s literally carpet. So it’s impossible. But with this kind of setting, it is possible. And this place is famous in Poland for those kinds of concerts and we sold out the house to 2,000 people. 

Then the ICE in Krakow was more than 2,000 people and it was sold out. Then in Wroclaw in NFM, it was great. 

What is so fantastic about our sound engineer is that he has to apply existing acoustics to what we want to create acoustically. So, for example, in Sala Ziemi, we had to create everything from scratch. But for example, in NFM or NOSPR or Concertgebouw or Berlin Philharmonic, you have to sort of play as basically, I would call it a not amplified concert with an enhancement, just like enhancing the vibe.

At the Berlin Philharmonic, it’s a 360-degree setting where you are in the center. So it is sort of like a bubble. So with the percussion, it was already very boomy and flashy. So you have to sort of correct it rather than make it amplified. So it’s a lot of hard work for our sound engineer Mateusz Banasiuk and that’s what I really appreciated about working with him.

OW: Tell me about the arrangements for each piece. How did those come about and what was that process like?

JJO: So the process was very experimental but also very careful. I’ve heard a lot of crossovers and I was not fond of them. And I’m very picky. I am not very picky with everything, but with this, I was very picky.

I always thought somebody could say, “Oh, you’re picky with this and you did something similar.” I do think we put so much work and so much thought behind all of the pieces that it didn’t cross the line. It’s a very thin line to do something over the top or to use too many effects or to do something kitschy or cringy in a way.

There have been many crossovers using a baroque piece and they’re just adding percussion. I don’t think those have created anything that will highlight what’s like important in the piece.

We started with “Alla gente a Dio diletta” not as a coincidence but as a starting point. It is a piece that tells you to free yourself of chains and bonds. That’s what the lyrics say and that’s what we wanted to experiment with.

That’s why my singing is literally classical but I did different ornaments than I recorded on my first album. But we used the arpeggiator to make the arpeggio like an electronic arpeggio. And then we added a little bit of a percussion and that was it. We started from that point.

We listened to that and we were like, “Okay, we can live with this.” And then moved forward.

And then, of course, “Pena Tiranna” was one thing we wanted to create as a full journey of what it can be. So that’s why we started with a very intimate bass line and me singing very classically. I added very classical ornamentation and then we changed it to a very jazzy vibe. And then that’s why I did the improvisation in a very jazzy way. And then we moved to some beats which is very different. But it was a way of showing what you can do with four to six chords that are in the beginning in that harmonic structure written so many years ago. And that was the journey.

We were trying to choose a piece and not change it because we wanted to forcefully change it. But what we wanted to explore was what we could add to it to make the new audience understand what kind of beauty baroque music has to offer. And that was the starting point for every basic creation on the album.

OW: How did you choose the pieces that you were going to use for this album?

JJO: We were checking what would work in a new environment and what tools we could use for a certain piece that would highlight exactly its beauty, but also would add something to the album and would not make it all the same.

And that’s why we have so many different genres on the album. And there were pieces that I thought were great but too sacred for us to change. We couldn’t think of something that we could add to them or make it worth it.

And in those pieces that we chose, we wanted to add something that gave it additional beauty or something that we wanted to explore and wanted to introduce to the public. So it was a long process and we started exploring in 2020 and then in 2022 we had the first concert with the material and started to edit the material.

And because of that concert, we added a few more pieces and we rethought the first group of songs to see if we were happy with it. And then, it changed a little bit on the actual recording because Church Studios was something special. But also to record an album for me in a very poppy way is different.

I had the booth for myself for the vocal line and then we had another booth for the bass player who I couldn’t see. And then in front of me behind the windows, I had the percussion, and behind the windows and the screens I had the piano. So we did play and recorded live together. But every single take counts because you can separate everything. It’s a completely different way of recording because you record so much and then you can change everything in the post-production.

In the class classical realm, you always have to record the best version. And when I record a baroque aria, I record the whole piece a few times, and then I do the A part a few times, the B part a few times, and the da capo part a few times. And then if something is really missing, then we would think of this one particular moment. But I love to have the full chance because then it gives the vibe of the piece.

And it’s not like robotic cuts of every single note, but in this way, that we recorded, let’s BaRock every single take counts because even if the bass player, messed up something, you just cut it out and you change it to the different take because you can because it’s so separate. With a classical recording, you are always with the full orchestra, which is in front of you or beside you. But the microphone always catches a little bit of that. So it’s very difficult to separate.

OW: When you record an album, you tour it. That is unusual in classical music and it’s more frequent in pop music. Why do you think it’s important to tour the album?

JJO: To be honest from the very beginning with Warner when they gave me the chance to record an album, I was shocked because I was not at that stage of my life where I was thinking of recording an album. So it came as a surprise.

But then rather quickly, I understood that this was another path of my career and I wanted to use that opportunity to be an artistic statement and sort of a diary. In an album, you really put your artistry and it is going to be there for the rest of your life. So with, “Anima Sacra,” it had a significant meaning to my beginnings of how I started to sing. I started in amateur choirs and singing in churches and cathedrals. So that’s why sacred music was very important to me and very quickly I decided that if it’s so important to my artistic vision of myself I want to tour it.

It was important to present something that I recorded and of course, it’s not that easy to promote your album. So it is easier if you have the chance, to perform it and go to other places. And I was lucky enough to start working and recording with Il Pomo d’oro, which had already a huge presence in the baroque scene.

And that’s why I was shocked and very grateful that Alain Lanceron, who is the president of Warner, put me in touch with Giulio.

And my first meeting with Giulio D’Alessio, who is a manager of Ilpo Modero, my first meeting was here in New York.

They were performing an album with Joyce Didonato at Carnegie Hall and I had a meeting with him here and I presented my idea of sacred music and said it was gonna be called “Anima Sacra.” 

And I showed him this as a very young singer because I was still studying at Juilliard. He was like, “wow, this is crazy.” He did not have that kind of experience with singers who already had a full concept, a visual concept, and all of the pieces that he, as a baroque musician, didn’t know. And that’s something that I like which is to explore new compositions. But that was a very strong initiative that took a lot of work. We did a year and a half of work with Yanis Francois to find those pieces and to creatively think of a concept that would grab the audience. So that’s why we were lucky to sell this program.

And the first tour was already 11 or 12 concerts of my first-ever album. And it was very successful.

So that’s why later with “Faccia d’amore” and “Anima Eterna,” all of those albums, we were able to tour. And now with “Beyond,” which we released last November, we already did 39 concerts on tour in North America, Europe, and Asia.

So I am super happy and very lucky to do that. I have to say that I love it because then all that work that you put in for a year finding the pieces, making new notations, and finding the proper musicians comes to life.

So it’s not only for the recording. It’s for another year or two of basically performing the piece. It’s like the pop world where you hear that an artist’s last album was released five years ago, but for those five years, they were performing this one album and it was still sold out in stadiums, you know like Madison Square Garden.

I’m not saying that I’m not gonna record an album and wait five years because unfortunately, I have seven new albums already on my computer that I could record right now because I just have a lot of ideas. But, I have to wait.

OW: With this album, are you planning on doing a full International tour?

JJO: Absolutely, I pushed very hard to do this first tour because I’ve never actually done a tour right on the date of the release. And that was the first time in my career that I actually managed to push for it. So we had 12 concerts right at the very beginning of when the release date was.

So that was the 27 of September. We started on the 25 and it was great. Now I’m a little bit busy with other things because I’m on paid holidays and then I’m doing “Agrippina” in Zurich and then we do a staged version of the “Stabat Mater” in Geneva. So for the next few months, I am kind of busy.

But then we are planning to do another tour of #LetsBaRock more internationally, mostly in Europe. But I am working on something that would happen in the U.S. hopefully, because I think it would work here very well. I think people would like the vibe of it especially because the American culture loves musicals. So they are very grounded in the sense of rhythm. It’s just so groovy in a way and I think that would work very well.

OW: Do you have anything coming here in the States?

JJO: Unfortunately, I don’t want to be very bitter about it, but the Met canceled three shows of mine. And I’m very sad about that because I loved coming here. And this is sort of my second home because of studying here at Juilliard and about my adoptive grandma.

I love spending time here and it always brings this excitement and this warm feeling. So I love working here. But unfortunately for now, I did the North American tour in March and April and don’t have anything planned. But hopefully, we will be back.