Veteran of musicals, operetta and opera, Norman Spivey worked with renowned baritones Gabriel Bacquier and Gérard Souzay in Paris on a Fulbright grant, which led to concert and opera engagements throughout France, as well as a tour of France and Canada as Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. While in France, he was also awarded the Harriet Hale Woolley Award as artist-in-residence at the Fondation des Etats-Unis. He has sung Schubert’s Winterreise at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and performed the American premiere of Poulenc’s rediscovered Quatre Poèmes de Max Jacob.
A more recent performance project, Écoute: pieces of Reynaldo Hahn, was an original one-man show written by Susan Russell that toured the country spotlighting the life and music of the French composer Reynaldo Hahn with an expressive blend of text, music, and poetry. Below are four songs featured in Écoute, with Spivey both playing the piano and singing. At bottom you'll find a video of the premiere of the show recorded at the Downtown Theatre in State College, PA.
Thank you!!! Everyone was talking about how wonderful your performance was…I had not really known what to expect, but had imagined the witty singer of salon songs. What you and your playwright brought us was so much more than that, you gave us a look at the depth of the man—it was quite profound. And you sang so well and played so well, from memory yet! It was truly an extraordinary performance. Kudos!!!Martha Randall,
University of Maryland
