Among Stephen Shaw-Naar's selections was Beethoven's 'The Rage Over The Lost Penny'. - File photos

The Soroptimist International Club of Jamaica and the Public Affairs section of the US Embassy collaborated to get New York City bass baritone Thomas Elliott to sing with a number of outstanding Jamaican musicians at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel on Sunday evening.

At the end of the Classics in June concert, the audience, which nearly filled the ballroom, indicated with enthusiastic applause that they had thoroughly enjoyed what they heard.

The music performed was generally light and, despite the name of the concert, it was not exclusively focused on classical music. Show tunes and spirituals were also sung, and even the selection by the heavyweight classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven was one of his least serious pieces. Consider the oxymoronic aspects of its title, The Rage Over The Lost Penny, known more formally as Rondo a capriccio in G. Op. 129.

Pianist Stephen Shaw-Naar played that particular item. The 2001 recipient of the Prime Minister's National Youth Award for Excellence in the Arts, Shaw-Naar went on to earn himself both a bachelor's and a master's degree in piano performance and is currently the staff accompanist at Long Beach City College.

'An outstanding student'

Other pianists on the programme were Roger Williams, the director of the School of Music, Edna Manley College (EMC), and Warren McPherson, a recent graduate of the school whom Williams described to The Gleaner as "an outstanding student". In fact, McPherson, who was the valedictorian for the Class of 2008, received two EMC awards for musical excellence and, between 2007 and 2008, also earned a number of Canadian awards from his grade nine and 10 piano exams.

The two other instrumentalists on the programme were clarinettist Rafael Salazar, an instructor at both the EMC and Northern Caribbean University's Music Department, and flautist Laurice Barnaby.

The latter was one of the members of the Soroptimist organisers of the concert, one of the club's two annual fund-raising ventures. Benefiting from the concert will be the Jamaica National Children's Home, an orphanage, and Shortwood United Church's Early Childhood Education Centre.

Introduced by the cheerful and professional Dervan Malcolm who, as emcee, correctly pronounced the often difficult Italian and German titles of the various musical items, McPherson started the evening's performances with a lacklustre rendition of a brief Bach prelude and fugue. His later pieces - the popular, gentle, Claire de Lune (Debussy), and the firey, complex, Aufschwung (Schumann) - were much more exciting.

If McPherson needed time to warm up, the more experienced Williams and Salazar didn't. Their playing of Guiseppe Tartini's Concertino was masterly from the beginning to the end of its four movements. Musically, the performance matched the beautiful decor of the stage area: slender trunks of tall, green plants wrapped with strings of white lights, seven-foot high, pink, yellow and white floral arrangements, four clusters of pink and white balloons on the back wall near the ceiling, and on that wall, in huge gold letters, the greeting 'Happy Father's Day.'

Strong visual images

Shaw-Naar's fast-paced rendition of Beethoven's The Rage over the Lost Penny solicited strong visual images. One could see the penny falling, bouncing and rolling down a street to eventually disappear, perhaps down some drain. According to one musician in the audience, himself a pianist, there was a lapse of memory towards the end of the piece, but it apparently went unnoticed by many.

Accompanied by Williams, the lovely Christine MacDonald-Nevers, the other singer on the programme, exuded seriousness for the solemn aria from Cristoph Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, then switched to "soft and gentle" for Menotti's Lullaby from The Consul.

For his first appearance, the black-suited Elliott - tall, with strong, chiselled features - sang three works by well-known composers, the first from Handel's oratorio Messiah, the second from Mozart's Die Zauberflote and the third from Puccini' La Boheme.

Elliott's voice is deep, rich and flexible, his manner imposing, and the latter may account for the puzzling behaviour of the audience. There was no applause until he had finished the three songs; then there was strong applause, so clearly the performance went down well.

A pleasant, friendly musical 'conversation' among instruments, flute (Barnaby), clarinet (Salazar) and piano (Shaw-Naar), playing Carillon by Georges Bizet, ended the first half of the concert. The same three opened the second half with a less interesting, too repetitive piece by Gabriel Faure.

After McPherson played again, Shaw-Naar returned to the piano for Schumann's fast-paced, complex, demanding Toccata. The audience appreciated his effort and rewarded him with strong applause.

Dramatic renditions

Then MacDonald-Nevers brought much humour to the evening with her dramatic renditions of the songs Someone is Sending me Flowers (from Shoestring Revue) and If I Were a Bell (from Guys and Dolls). Salazar and Williams final contribution as a pair was the Latin-flavoured Vals Venezolana (Paquito D'Rivera).

Fittingly and powerfully, Elliott, as the special guest from the United States, ended the programme. His closing songs were two spirituals, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child and I Want Jesus to Walk With Me, and two Gershwin songs from Porgy and Bess - I Got Plenty o' Nuttin and Oh Bess, Where's My Bess?

Presentations to the performers by the Soroptimists ended the delightful evening.

Laurice Barnaby (left) and Rafael Salazar delighted at Classics in June.