Nansi Carroll - AMO: A Musical Offering

ART & MUSIC
Nansi Carroll
Gainesville’s Cultural Hidden Treasure
by Ellis Amburn
When Dr. Nansi Carroll, a
gale force in Gainesville
music at 65, was recently
asked to name her favorite artist, she
chuckled before replying, “It always
changes, but there are standouts.”
She mentioned her father, Edward,
who was a Methodist pastor at a church
in Baltimore.
“Roland Hayes presented a recital
there,” Carroll said, referring to the
lyric tenor born in 1887 in Curryville,
Georgia, the son of former slaves. Hayes
became the fi rst African-American male
concert artist to receive international
recognition, earning $100,000 per year
touring and teaching voice. Long before
the civil rights movement, he defi ed
racist segregation laws in Rome, Georgia,
and was beaten and arrested. His
recordings of “Were You There [when
they crucifi ed my Lord?]” and “Go Down
Moses,” are heartrending and noble.
“Marian Anderson,” Carroll continued,
naming another powerful motivator. “I saw
her in a live performance at the Baltimore
concert hall toward the end of her career.”
Called “the voice of the century” by
Arturo Toscanini, Anderson scored a
historic victory over racial discrimination
when she sang “God Bless America”
from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
after the DAR refused to let her perform
before an integrated audience in Constitution
Hall in 1939.
“Just to be in her presence...” Carroll
said, and left it at that.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was the
next artist on her list of all-time greats.
“I saw him when he fi rst began singing
— two concerts in London, one all
Schubert. Extraordinary,” she said.
In a British poll, the German lyric
baritone was ranked the second greatest
singer of the 20th century after Jussi
Bjorling, and Who’s Who cited him as
the most recorded artist of all time.
“When I was studying in England at
the Dartington College of Arts, I went to a
summer festival in Devon,” Carroll continued.
“Gerald Moore had just retired from
live performing. He’d been a hero of mine.
He and Janet Baker gave a recital. I walked
two miles back, I was so fl abbergasted.”
Moore had long been the piano accompanist
of choice for the world’s most
celebrated musicians.
“He partnered for Pablo Casals, Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf, Fischer-Dieskau,”
she said. “I met Moore. He wrote a
[1962] autobiography, “Am I Too Loud?”
and made the public aware of the signifi -
cance of the collaborative piano.”
To Carroll, piano accompaniment “is
a serious course of study, and Moore was
the pioneer.” As Fischer-Dieskau wrote
in the introduction to Moore’s 1943 book
“The Unashamed Accompanist,” Moore
raised the status of accompaniment from
a supporting role to equal partnership
with the soloist.
It was also at Dartington that Carroll
encountered the Argentinean-born
Daniel Barenboim.
“His father did a master class there,”
she recalled.
Once the conductor of the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim
is currently music director of both La
Scala in Milan and the Berlin State Opera.
A major pianist as well as conductor,
Barenboim’s keyboard pyrotechnics in
Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto (No. 5),
with Michael Schonwandt conducting, is
22 July 2012 seniortimesmagazine.com