Julie Gunn (both are professors of music at the University of Illinois) no doubt has an unusual degree of rapport with this particular performer, but she's an extraordinary accompanist by any measure. Their by-play was a part of the fun.

Julie Gunn, though, is an exemplary collaborative pianist seemingly equally at ease in all the genres the duo performed in Thursday’s recital. The pair’s onstage banter was both charming and informative, especially when discussing the two less-well-known composers on the first, more “serious” half of the program. These are the American Ben Moore, who will himself be at the Modern Museum of Art in Fort Worth on February 13, in a performance and discussion of his works, and the English Roger Quilter, who was most active in the 1910s and 1920s. Julie Gunn remarked that to them, these composers are musical descendants of Schumann. Indeed, neither reflects the tonalities we’ve come to think of as “new” music.

2017-2018 Season

The 2017-18 season promises to be an exciting one! Nathan and I will be celebrating American Songs at the DeBartolo Center (get ready to sing along!) and touring our cabaret to Nashville, Thomasville, Kalamazoo, Palm Desert, and Beverly Hills.

We’ll be in DC and LA to celebrate the Krannert Center with alumni and friends, and proud to produce four Lyric Theatre @ Illinois shows: [title of show], Hansel and Gretel, Don Giovanni (Nathan’s directorial debut!) and She Loves Me. We’ll keep you posted about masterclasses and other gatherings along the way.

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.