Paul Sperry

2 Pages 525 Words

For my first concert report, I opted to attend Paul Sperry’s guest appearance at the Staples Family Concert Hall on February 15th. I chose this date mainly because I had never heard of him and I’m always open to exposing myself to new artists. Also, he’s a tenor and so am I. My expectations were few seeing as how I had never heard of Paul Sperry prior to this concert. I suppose I would say that I expected a quaint evening of serenades; perhaps some Beethoven or even a piece by Stroope. What I experienced instead, was an unentertaining evening of very strange and whimsical selections that I later learned are referred to as “American Folksongs”.
He performed Robert Beaser’s, “The Seven Deadly Sins”-a suite with one movement for every deadly sin. To me, this piece was fairly redundant and uninteresting. There was very little melodic variation and (to borrow a word from the mainstream music arena) it wasn’t “catchy”. I don’t know if I’m just shallow or unintelligent, but the lyrical content made little to no sense to me. It vaguely described consequences and actions concerning the particular “sin”. But they really didn’t follow much of a pattern. Mr. Sperry, however, performed the pieces well. His voice is well-trained and very powerful. I have no criticism for his execution of this piece.
The next piece I’ll discuss is Tom Cipullo’s “Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House”. This is suite written from the perspective of a middle-class neighborhood resident lamenting about household quirks and neighboring dogs that remind them of why they don’t own firearms. This piece was amusing at times; particularly the final movement that whines about the common neighborhood complaint of a barking dog. While I was able to relate to many of the quirks that Cipullo pointed out in this piece, I was less than entertained by it. It struck me as fairly shallow and poorly written. The music was plain and...