The United States seems (if this could be possible) even more divided and challenged than it did a week ago. In spite and even because of that, I am continuing my salute to the truly great Americans in our shared past to provide us with inspiration and courage in the challenging days to come. Today I repost an episode that I initially presented on …

I am here visiting my family in Milwaukee this week, a time which has proven to be a landmark in the downward spiral of our country into fascism. And all right here in our own backyard! It all struck way too close to home for me when the minister at my mother’s church delivered the benediction at the opening ceremonies of the RNC on Monday and sudd…

Every so often I discover a singer who had previously not come under my radar, but who simply blows me away with their voice, artistry, and communicative powers. Such an artist is the Baton Rouge-born African American soprano Lenora Lafayette (1926-1975), historically important as the first Black artist to perform at Covent Garden. Relocating to Ba…

As I embark on several weeks of vacation, I bring you the first of several episodes from the early years of the podcast in between the new episodes that I will produce with somewhat less frequency between now and September. This week I am honored to bring to you the first of two episodes from the Season One of Countermelody which introduced my list…

I sat in my apartment in Berlin on the Fourth of July wondering how, after the events of this past Monday, I can possibly pay tribute to our nation as it “celebrated” its birthday. Then it hit me: since I would never in a million years produce an episode of patriotic musical material, why not pay tribute to a great American singer instead? I had al…

Please join me today for this overview of the roller coaster career of Alberta Hunter (01 April 1895 – 17 October 1984), a jazz legend whose surprising and extraordinary life was shaped by a voice that simply personified the Blues. Early in her life, around the time she was 15, she fled her native Memphis for Chicago, where, with tenacity, grit, an…

Today I revisit the life and legacy of lyric baritone William Parker (05 August 1943 – 29 March 1993), to whom I devoted an episode exactly a year ago. To further explore his unmatched contribution to the art of song, I present a second episode which was originally published as a bonus episode at the same time, featuring Will in four contrasting so…

My intention this week to produce a joyous new episode further celebrating contraltos, was undermined by multiple deaths this past week in the musical world, including French pop icon Françoise Hardy, Swiss tenor Eric Tappy, American art song icon Paul Sperry, and R&B diva Angela Bofill, capped by the tragic demise of young Belgian coloratura sopra…

It’s been a whirlwind of a week chez Gundlach and I find myself at the end of it without a new episode ready to post. In addition to that, we are already halfway through Pride Month and I realized this morning that I had no new queer material up my sleeve. So I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do: I am going to get to work on a brand new episode which wi…

Have you ever encountered a singer that no one has apparently heard of, yet once you have discovered them, you feel compelled to introduce them to practically everyone you know? I’ve had this experience more than a few times over the past five years of producing weekly Countermelody episodes, and today I bring you another such singer: friends, meet…

During Black History Month this year I featured a group of five exceptional singers I dubbed, for lack of a better term, “Forgotten Divas.” Each of these women, sopranos Delcina Stevenson, Annabelle Bernard, and Veronica Tyler, mezzo-soprano Gwendolyn Killebrew, and jazz singer Ethel Ennis, represents the peak of achievement in each of their respec…

Finally, the first in my long-promised series on the contralto voice! The contralto is a rara avis in the today’s opera and classical music scene, and yet back in the day, there seem to have been more of them before the public. And of course contraltos have always been a powerful presence on the popular music scene, whether in blues, disco, jazz, o…

Several summers ago I published my first episode celebrating the artistry of Sylvia Sass which primarily featured her 1984 album of pop songs sung in Hungarian. At the time I called it, without any irony, the finest crossover album of the 1980s and one of the best of all time. Sass is an artist who continues to engage discourse. Many of the opinion…

Today’s episode is one of my Listeners’ Favorites episodes, this one introduced by my wonderful friend Thom Baker. He had just written me about his enthusiasm for the Rosanna Carteri episode I posted in the fall of 2020 on the occasion of her death, just a few short weeks before her 90th birthday. Thom and I were both equally taken with this long-l…

In the very first season of Countermelody I presented an episode which featured both Lawrence Winters and Robert McFerrin, two of the most significant baritones of the twentieth century, and both trail-blazing African American singers. Last week I revisited the life, career, and recordings of Lawrence Winters, and this week, as a companion to that …

During the first season of Countermelody I presented the great African American baritone Lawrence Winters in an episode which paired him with his contemporary Robert McFerrin. Today Winters (born Lawrence Whisonant in South Carolina on 12 November 1915 and died of cancer in Hamburg at age 49 on 24 September 1965) returns center stage to Countermelo…

Today I present to you the American lyric tenor Frank Lopardo, who from 1984 through 2014 appeared in all the major opera houses of the world, celebrated particularly for his Mozart and Rossini roles. Too often today these superb singers even from the recent past are forgotten by today’s audiences, and my listeners know that it is always a mission …

I have been juggling a number of brand new episode ideas for the coming weeks, but when I discovered that Sunday April 7 was the birthday of Marvis Martin, one of my favorite sopranos, I put all those ideas on the back burner and eagerly put together this birthday tribute to a singer who not only is celebrated as possessing one of the most beautifu…

Many of my listeners look forward with eager anticipation to my annual April Fool’s episodes, and today’s packs a particularly powerful punch! A few months back my friend Thomas Bagwell, a perpetual friend of the podcast, told me he had a dub of a rare recording on Philips Records [sic] by the New York-based soprano Mari Lyn, well known as the Sing…

I return to you with one final episode for the month of March, again focusing on Holy Week. In this case, I present to you art songs on contemplative, Biblical, even Lenten themes. Composers represented include Dvorák, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, as well as Wolf and Brahms. The final works of both of these composers are song cycles, Wolf’s M…

Once again we have reached the climax of the penitential season of Lent, the most theologically significant week in the Christian calendar, namely Holy Week. Even for those who are not observant Christians, this period, standing as it does on the threshold of spring, the season of rebirth, can be a time of meditation and remembrance. To help suppor…

The French baritone Gérard Souzay was born Gérard Tisserand on 8 December 1918 and died in Antibes on 17 August 2004. This episode was one of my first episodes, originally posted in honor of his then 101st birthday. It has been chosen by my friend Randall Scarlata as his Listeners’ Favorite episode in the last of this month’s Great Baritones series…

I was thrilled to discover a while back that the pianist, interviewer, and journalist Zsolt Bognár, who produces the video series Living the Classical Life, is a devoted fan of Countermelody. We recently met up in person in NYC, where we discussed, among many other things, the supremacy of Franz Schubert and how his humanity finds perfect expressio…

Today’s segment in the Great Baritones division of my Listeners’ Favorites series is introduced by my friend, baritone Jeremy Osborne, like me an American expat in Berlin. In the nearly ten years that I have known him, Jeremy has developed into a fine singer of both opera and art song. Through talent, determination, and hard work, Jeremy is forging…

(Leavin’ on a jet plane this afternoon, so posting a day or so early!)It is a wonderful thing when friends share a favorite singer. Such is the case with my friend of long-standing, Julian Long (once one reaches a certain age, one no longer uses the term “old friend”). As part of this month’s series of Listeners’ Favorites episodes, Julian has been…