It is called the brownstone baritone.
“Sometimes there is a drone [of street noise] As I’m finishing my softest number, “said 56-year-old Peter Clarke, who hosts a weekly concert from a stop on Hicks Street in Brooklyn Heights.” And don’t get me started on fresh direct trucks To do.”
Despite garbage trucks, car horns and occasional drills, Clarke puts on one of the most unique live shows in the city. The opera singer and musical theater artist first went on to sing in his building’s garden on May 1, the same night he was scheduled to make his debut at the Tri Cities Opera in the making of “A Little Night Music”, indefinitely. The epidemic has been postponed for.
Clarke said, “I didn’t want to jump into the mercy party” “I brought my speaker down and started singing a song from ‘Carmen’.”
Since then, Clarke, who lived on Hicks Street for 24 years and taught music at St. Ann’s School, performed 154 alfresco concerts. Before the epidemic, he Enjoyed stage roles Including Henry Higgins “My Fair Lady” (Ashlon Opera) and Sweeney Todd at the St. Petersburg Opera. More recently, he has a returning audience of 25 or more locals, mostly seniors, who enjoy resonant singing of Arya and Broadcast standards.
First, Clarke did 100 consecutive shows, then took a break in early August. In the fall, he resumed, singing on the street on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings until he was chased down the block by angry neighbors. “People in my building were dominating it,” said Clarke, who reported that co-op members found it strange to leave the show in the middle of the building. “So we went to the block just for Rita.”
Rita Schwartz, a longtime Hicks Street resident and classically trained musician, was delighted to host the show at the age of 83 at the footsteps of her brownstone. “The acoustics are doing better at my house anyway,” said Schwartz, who is out to the audience to kiss Hershey. “We are all connected because he brought all of us together,” she said.
“I quit pursuing musical theater years ago,” said 49-year-old Sarah Orlando, a fellow resident who moved to Brooklyn Heights from Belu, Wash., With a dream of being on Broadway about 15 years ago. One evening last December – it was Wednesday, as Clarke only performs one night a week during the winter – she walked by her concert, calling the run-in “serendipity”.
After the show, Orlando had a chat and introduced himself to a couple. “We started talking about Sondheim,” Orlando said. The two began rehearsing the musical “Company” that night, “Barcelona”, and a full performance on the stoop a few weeks later.
Since then, the redheaded church choir conductor has performed in a short nighttime musical from “Broadway Baby,” “Adelaide’s Lamet” and “Guys and Dolls” and “Send in the Clowns”. . “I have more faith in my upper register” working Orlando as a corporate communications copywriter.
Even Clarke’s neighbor, Patricia Roberts, who called working from home under an active opera singer an “interesting experience”, captures the weekly sets, which she said also give her “joy”. “When you think of people working remotely, you think of office workers,” said Roberts, a financial advisor.
“Some people have heard dogs barking against the backdrop of their zoom call,” she said. “I have a metropolitan opera.”
Wednesday at 5 pm (it rains on Friday); 129 Hicks St., Brooklyn
Leave a Reply