Baritone Michael Hix is back. The much in demand American singer has performed with orchestras across our country and in Europe, not to mention the San Juan Symphony more than once. He returns to Durango on Friday, not for a big concert but an intimate recital.
If you go
WHAT: UUFD Recital Series: Baritone Michael Hix, pianist Marilyn Garst
WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday
WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 419 San Juan Drive
ADMISSION: $25 adults, $8 students and children. Cash or checks at the door.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit durangouu.org/events/recital-series or www.michaelhixbaritone.net or email mmgarst1940@gmail.com
Music lovers who have heard Hix sing in the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College have a chance to hear him again in a very different setting. With pianist Marilyn Garst, founder of the Unitarian Universalist Recital Series, Hix will close out the year in a program that includes concert arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, German lieder by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, a song cycle with William Shakespearean texts by England’s Gerald Finzi, and selections from musical theater. In the middle, Garst will pay homage to George Gershwin with distinctive piano arrangements.
Last year, Garst, artistic director of the 18-year series, asked Hix if he could fit in a Durango recital. He said yes. As professor of voice and chair of the Department of Music at the University of New Mexico, he also juggles an international performance schedule. His Durango sojourn follows a solo commitment in Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. John Passion” with California’s Inland Master Chorale. After his Durango recital, Hix solos again with the Las Cruces Symphony in Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem.”
He has sung with the Boston Pops and other orchestras throughout the United States. And as a specialist in Baroque music, Hix has performed in Bach festivals from Oregon to Texas. His 20-role operatic repertoire keeps him busy. He has performed with opera companies from Los Angeles to Portland, Glimmerglass to Washington and abroad at the Berlin Opera Academy. Last August, he unfurled the challenging role of George III in “Eight Songs for a Mad King” at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Composed by Britain’s Sir Peter Davies, the strange and hypnotic 30-minute work can be found on YouTube.
Hix’s day job at UNM requires teaching and administrative skills. So, to say he has a complicated double career as a performer and academic is an understatement.
Garst also has a long, professional rap sheet. Like Hix, she has three music degrees including a doctorate. For 25 years, she served on the music faculty at The George Washington University as professor of piano, harpsichord and keyboard ensembles. She performs with her sister, cellist Bonnie Mangold, in the Mangold Duo. And after moving to Durango, she served for 11 years as music director for the UU Fellowship and continues as classical pianist and artistic director for the recital series.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
