Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra welcomes back baritone Bill McMurray for not one but two performances during its 45th anniversary season.
Porgy and Bess on Oct. 15 at Trinity Christian College’s Ozinga Chapel in Palos Heights features the baritone as well as Netanel Draiblate (violin), Kimberly E. Jones (soprano) and Chicago Community Chorus (Keith T. Hampton, artistic director and founder).
“This Porgy and Bess concert is unique in that you’re getting the majority of the big numbers from the opera itself but instead of having multiple solo singers you have two singers — a soprano and a baritone — that are taking on all of the roles,” said McMurray of Chicago’s Rogers Park community.
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“It’s unique and challenging in that because the characters themselves are different voice types. You have to have a soprano — in this case Kimberly E. Jones — who is able to use those colors and those resonances to sing all three of those different roles.
“The same thing for baritone. You’ve got him singing Porgy, which is more of a bass-baritone. You’ve got him singing Jake, which is a baritone, and singing Sportin’ Life, which is a tenor. You’ve got to have a baritone to sing that range and to be able to sing those higher notes for the tenor part.”
“Porgy and Bess: A Concert of Songs” is by George Gershwin and arranged by Robert Russell Bennett.
“You’ll still be able to get the full story from this even though it’s a shortened version and, of course, having the chorus in there, which is an integral part of this opera, because they provide so much of that energy and support that the soloists need,” McMurray said.
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra’s opening night concert, which is conducted by music director Stilian Kirov, also includes Gershwin’s “Girl Crazy” overture and James M. Stephenson’s Violin Concerto.
“I like that it’s a local orchestra. These are your homegrown people even though some of them are playing in other orchestras as well,” McMurray said.
“Whenever you have what we refer to as a community orchestra, you get people that are playing not because this is necessarily their career but it’s something they’ve enjoyed doing. They’re a little more laid-back and relaxed. It’s a little more easygoing.
“They tend to be a little more personable as well with the artists.”
He first performed with Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, which also is led by executive director Christina Salerno, as bass soloist for a 2018 concert featuring George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah.”
McMurray’s second performance during Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2022-23 season is on Dec. 17 as bass soloist for Handel’s “Messiah.” That 3 p.m. holiday concert also features Jones, Annie Rosen (mezzo-soprano), Ryan Townsend Strand (tenor) and Chicago Community Chorus.
“Anytime I get the opportunity to perform it, I’m going to take that,” said McMurray.
“Illinois Philharmonic reached out to me for this opportunity to come back and sing it again. ‘Messiah’ is one of my favorite pieces to perform. I love the music in it. It’s an opportunity to sing different styles.”
McMurray performed most recently with Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra as Narrator for “The Snowman” in 2021.
“That was fun because we were not using projections,” he said.
“In previous performances of that particular piece, orchestras have used the projections that go with the illustrations that came out in the 1970s or 1980s. We gave the audience the opportunity to visualize it themselves through my narration and the singing of the boy soprano.”
McMurray’s interest in singing was sparked at Albritton Middle School in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“My eighth-grade chorus teacher, Patti Hasty, would often play music for us as we were entering the classroom. One particular day she was playing something classical and it was in another language. I guessed it was opera. She said it was an aria from the opera ‘The Marriage of Figaro,'” he said.
“I said, ‘I like that’ and half-jokingly said, ‘I want to sing like that.’ She said, ‘If you want you can go to college and you can learn to sing like that and become an opera singer because you have a very special gift.’
“That was the first time anyone ever told me I had a talent for music. I decided then and there that was what I was going to do.
“As soon as I got on stage and when the music started and we’re there in costume, I fell in love with it,” said McMurray who told his East Carolina voice teacher Louise Toppin during his junior year that he wanted to switch his focus from education to performance.
McMurray, who received a master of music in performance from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has sung more than 40 operatic roles and, as a member of Chicago Symphony Chorus, was part of 2020’s “Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13, ‘Babi Yar,'” which won a Grammy for best engineered album, classical.
CSO Resound, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s in-house label, recorded a live 2018 performance of the Dmitri Shostakovich symphony with Zell music director Riccardo Muti conducting, bass soloist Alexey Tikhomirov and the chorus’s men directed by Duain Wolfe.
‘Porgy and Bess’
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When: 5:30 p.m. Oct. 15
Where: Trinity Christian College’s Ozinga Chapel, 6601 W. College Drive, Palos Heights
Tickets: $10-$74; $35 We Pick (only available in advance)
Information: 708-481-7774; ipomusic.org
Jessi Virtusio is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.