It’s Independence Day in the U.S.A., and I’m going to hand it over to my Canadian compatriot, the sensational soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan, to commemorate the day musically. [ see Part 2 for an American perspective ]
“For me, every album is a statement,” Barbara Hannigan told Apple Music Classical. “It should have a dramaturgical structure and be a kind of philosophical statement. I wouldn’t have done An American Dream? if I wasn’t so sad about the way I saw things going.” The Canadian soprano and conductor’s album explores the role music has played in building community and uniting disparate peoples. Those qualities were cultivated in the 20th century’s first half by a remarkable generation of American composers, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Richard Rodgers, and Jule Styne among them, whose parents fled poverty or oppression in Europe for better lives in the US.“
