Countermelody

As a pendant to, and continuation of, my Black History Month 2026 series on Countermelody, I am pleased and honored to present to you the exquisite African American lyric soprano Klesie Kelly, who, as with numerous other singers that we have explored together this month, has made her life, career, and home abroad, in this case, Germany, where she came to pursue post-university studies in Detmold and from there simply put down roots. Though unlike me, Kelly was not born in Milwaukee, she did spend some of her formative years there, including pursuing her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In her years in Germany, Kelly was not only an active and deeply respected both on the operatic stage and the concert platform (where her performances of Bach were particularly lauded), but she also dedicated herself to the education of many of the finest singers to have come through the Musikhochschule in Köln. I have managed to unearth a number of invaluable sound documents of Klesie Kelly, including a number of recordings of Lieder and duets with instrumental obbligato accompaniment, and peerless performances of Bach cantatas, as well as a 1970 concert performance of Porgy and Bess in the Netherlands, and an ultrarare recording made during her undergraduate years in Wisconsin. Excerpts from all of these are heard on the episode, which salutes (and delivers flowers to) one of the most respected German-American musical figures of her generation.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

Last week I published an episode about Black Pop Singers who emigrated to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of these gentlemen settled in the German-speaking countries, where there was a ready market for the “otherness” and exoticism that they embodied. The one outlier on that episode was Henry Wright, born in 1933, who in the late 1950s toured Italy with Lionel Hampton’s band and elected to remain there. With a voice as suave and seductive as any of the great crooners of the 1950s and 1960s, Henry Wright first came to international prominence as the voice on the record to which Sophia Loren performed her legendary striptease in the 1962 film Ieri, oggi, domani [Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow]. He went on to make a great impact on Italian pop music throughout the 1960s. A couple years ago I began collecting the ultra-rare (and costly) records of Henry Wright, which formed the basis of two separate Countermelody episodes. Here is the second of those episodes, first published as a bonus episode nearly three years ago now, which is devoted to Henry Wright’s recordings of pop standards, most of them from the so-called Great American Songbook, but a few of them English-language adaptations of favorite songs originally in Italian. The program begins with one of Henry Wright’s first Italian recordings, which features standards by Duke Ellington and Harold Arlen. The majority of the music on the program, however, is from Henry Wright’s 1967 LP, Prisoner of Amore, in which he is joined by the doodling pianism of Romano Mussolini (youngest son of the late dictator), and the somewhat overwrought arrangements of Giulio Libano. In spite of the excesses of his colleagues, Henry Wright still manages to make a positive showing in this, (as far as I know!) his final recording. In the course of the episode, I go down a number of rabbit holes that go off in a number of interesting directions: the songs of Harry Warren, the early pop stylings of Gérard Souzay in the first flush of youth as a pop crooner on the French airwaves, and the fascinating life and times of the pre-hippie Eden Ahbez, best known as the composer of “Nature Boy,” whose further compositions were performed by (among others) the sophisticated and cosmopolitan Eartha Kitt and Ahbez himself.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

As the last official entry in Countermelody’s Black History Month 2026 series, I bring you a potpourri episode that has long been a dream of mine: one dedicated entirely to the Spiritual, that distinctly American musical form that was born in adversity (specifically enslavement, murder, torture, family separation) and yet by a confluence of miracles yielded the most transcendentally beautiful music ever heard on this beleaguered planet. This is no scholarly exegesis of the form (there are others much better-versed in its history than I); it is rather a celebration of nearly a century of great performances of these songs by the finest concert singers of the twentieth century, beginning with Harry Thacker Burleigh through Janet Williams and the late Roberta Alexander (it still hurts my heart to write this!) In between, many additional Countermelody favorites are heard, including Dorothy Maynor, Marian Anderson, Todd Duncan, Jules Bledsoe, Paul Robeson, Margaret Tynes, Muriel Smith, Gloria Davy, Roland Hayes, Veronica Tyler, Adele Addison, Charles Holland, Anne Wiggins Brown, Robert McFerrin, Camilla Williams, Inez Matthews, and Miss Leontyne Price in arrangements by such exceptional African American composers as Julia Perry, Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, Undine Smith Moore, Hall Johnson, and Florence Price. There was so much material that, with regret, I had to leave by the wayside that you can be sure that there will be an additional spirituals episode in the very near future! I dedicate this episode to my beloved mother, who loved these songs, and to all those who have recently lost loved ones.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

As the penultimate episode in my 2026 Black History Month series, I revisit the stories of African American performers who, for a variety of reasons, including seeking to improve their increase their opportunities as artists of color, made their way to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. Today the focus is on the low-voiced males, baritones, bass-baritones, and basses, in a variety of musical genres, who found success overseas. Surely the most famous of these is the great operatic baritone Lawrence Winters, who leads off the episode, but there were many others as well, some in opera, some in pop music, and some in that magical and confusing world in between, who also experienced life in its fullness, not just in Germany, but in Austria, Italy, and Norway as well. A few of these singers, among them Kenneth Spencer and Thomas Carey, are still somewhat remembered today. Far too many others are virtually forgotten. Among those we also discuss William Ray, Owen Williams, Henry Wright, William Pearson, George Goodman, and Allan Evans. The musical selections are primarily focused on pop music and crossover, with some fascinating exceptions. Even within this somewhat circumscribed musical palette, however, there is much variety to be experienced, and celebrated.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

 

As we hurtle toward the third anniversary (in May already!) of Grace Bumbry’s death, I have had her very much on my mind. It’s true that I consider her greatest achievement to have been as a Liedersängerin. Others opine that her operatic roles as a mezzo (Carmen, Eboli, Amneris among others) represent her at her very finest. There are fewer who focus on her work as a soprano. And yet, when she sang the most taxing roles in that fach, she often revealed a fearlessness, a fortitude, a determination, a pride that brought out her very best. If one examines her recorded output, one finds her essaying soprano arias almost from her very earliest recordings. I thought it might be fun to continue Diva Week on Countermelody’s Black History Month celebratory episodesby examining her enduring legacy of her recorded output as a soprano. This time I focus exclusively on her studio recordings as a soprano, sometimes (but not always) in roles that she also sang onstage (Norma, Tosca, Gioconda, even Medea). (There’s even a little operetta and a pop standard tossed in for fun.) When La Bumbry first began singing the soprano repertoire, some naysayers predicted irreparable vocal burnout. But they were wrong: until the very end, Grace retained, by virtue of both solid technique and enormous willpower, the same vocal richness and musical and artistic fingerprint that she possessed for more than six decades and which we celebrate in this episode.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.