Uhh . . .
Thank you. So that’s new. He can criticize everything. But I was not singing as a classical singer. It was really jazz singing. So if he thinks it was new, fine. What shall I do new? I mean, I think in jazz music, everything is really sung, and said. I’m not singing free jazz, where you maybe could find some new ways and positions, and it was a first try — you can be very sure we will do this again, with a different group, and we will see what happens. But it was not my ambition to say something totally new. I did this “American Songbook” because I love the music, very very much. He was expecting something new, sad for him. But I can live definitely with it.
I always wonder what a performer thinks of that kind of criticism. What does the critic means by "new"?
You can be very sure that if I had sung that with a kind of imitation of Frank Sinatra, he would have said, “Oh, he sings like Frank Sinatra.” I sang it with my voice, so in jazz music, that was new, because I never did before in Carnegie Hall. Or in America. So, what’s the problem? I mean, the audience in Vienna, Hamburg, and Berlin loved it. It was lot of fun. And I think that for a smaller group with not the best sound equipment, because it wasn’t possible, because the unions said, “If we put one more speaker on stage, it will double the price,” and what the unions are doing, I’m very sorry, in the United States is very crazy. So we hadn’t had the best sound equipment, and I think that what we did, I mean, we had a wonderful group, [pianist] Alan Broadbent is wonderful, about [percussionist] Peter Erskine there’s no need to talk, Till Brönner is an excellent trumpet player, Chuck Loeb is one of my favorite guitar players, Dieter Ilg for me one of the best double-bass players existing in the moment in the jazz world. So if that wasn’t new, fine, but we had a lot of fun, and that was the main important thing. And the recording, by the way, was very successful. You know what — if I were to produce it, it would be different, because I think it’s a little suggestion to the classical-music world so it’s not too jazzy, so it’s very mainstream. But it’s okay, we did it on purpose not to shock — well, in America it’s possible, but in Germany and Europe it’s a different world, and you have to be a little bit careful not to lose the classical audience and win the jazz audience. So you have to make a little balancing act to do this, but I think it’s okay.
You've sung Don Fernando in Fidelio and Amfortas in Parsifal on stage. Is there more opera in your future?
No.
