Busy Gunns make time for Notre Dame recital

Superstar baritone and South Bend native Nathan Gunn has sung numerous iconic roles in opera and musical theater.

Two baritones in one show could have been a surfeit, but Gunn's rich, reverberant, operatic voice amply contrasted with Patinkin's lighter one and his routine use of that trademark falsetto. They were superbly accompanied by the dual grand pianos of Julie Jordan Gunn and Paul Ford.

At the piano, Julie Gunn also emphasized clarity, with a slightly percussive touch and a relish for complexity, élan increasing with the density of notes.

Accompanying Mr. Gunn on piano was his wife, Julie Jordan Gunn, a vocal coach, song arranger and specialist in programming recitals of American music. Her bouncy, unpretentious arrangements supplied crucial pop buoyancy to her husband’s performances, which don’t stray far from the formality of classical lieder.

The baritone Nathan Gunn, a Met favorite who was in excellent voice, was joined by two rising singers in their 20s: the impressively gifted soprano Susanna Phillips and the intensely expressive tenor Michael Fabiano. Jonathan Kelly, from the Met’s music staff, accompanied most of the program, though the pianist Julie Gunn, Mr. Gunn’s wife, also played stylishly, notably in the offbeat fare her husband sang.

Julie Gunn, a vocal coach and accompanist by profession, provided much more than support, as the piano is an equal participant in this enterprise. When she was not buoying the vocal line up from beneath with running commentary, she was either drawing him in with engaging scene-setting passages or recapitulating with a quietly emphatic closing statement. She proved a thoughtful and sensitive interpretive partner throughout.