Interview: Joyce talks about bold new project she'll bring to Harriman-Jewell Series

The Independent
by Paul Horsley
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Can music change the human heart? Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato believes it can, and the Prairie Village native has devoted a substantial part of her international career to projects that further this tenet. In addition to being one of the great singers of our time, Joyce has produced a series of award-winning recordings and concerts dealing with love, sorrow, jealousy, redemption, death and (not least of all) joy.

The multiple Grammy Award-winning diva, whom The New Yorker called “perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation,” has triumphed on opera stages and in concert halls the world over, and in a series of wide-ranging and award-winning recordings. Most recently her Joyce and Tony: Live at Wigmore Hall, featuring leader/conductor Antonio Pappano, won the 2016 Grammy for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Her latest recording project for Erato/Warner Classics, In War and Peace: Harmony Through Music, was released November 4th and is accompanied by a 20-city tour with the early-music ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro and director/harpsichordist Maxim Emelyanychev. This Pearl Harbor Day, appropriately perhaps, her tour lands at Kansas City’s Folly Theater, a presentation of the Harriman-Jewell Series. This fascinating concert consists of searing Baroque arias dealing with war and peace, both internal and external, and if the performance is anything like the recording, we’re all in for an extraordinary ride.

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