Dear List:
For many years I used to attend Chanticleer concerts in San Francisco. The "old" Chanticleer that I was so fond of had a quartet of notable higher voices: Randall Wong, Stephen Rickards, Neil Rogers, and Mark Daniel.
While the countertenors got most people's attention, I was also impressed with their talented higher tenors, Neil and Mark. These two tenors are certainly what one might call a "baroque" or "early music" type voice. Their voices are not remarkably high (I believe their upper passaggio point is about G4), but they sing with ease in the tenor and alto range.
I have posted 4 clips in the Files sections.
The first set of clips are from Chanticleer's Gospel album, and has 3 short sections from Neil's solo, "Lord I want to be a Christian." He sings a repeated passage in the range from D4 to G4 - the exact passaggio region we have been discussing. In the first cut, the dynamic is mezzo-forte to forte. In the second cut, the dynamic is piano. In the third cut, the dynamic is again mf-f and Neil goes up to Bb4. It would be wrong in my opinion to conclude that Neil is taking his "chest voice" up that high, but Neil is quite consistent in his timbre.
The second short clip is from Chanticleer's Christmas album. Mark sings, "It'll lead to a place" in the range from G4 to Bb4 - illustrating the much discussed tenor head voice. ALthough there is not much "chest" quality mixed in, I believe that Mark is most definitely not singing falsetto. Then he goes down through the passaggio and ends up in chest voice.
Hope this is interesting. I'll remove the clips in a few days.
Cheers,
Michael Gordon
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