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RUBICON CLASSICS
Grammy-Winning Baritone Lucas Meachem Releases First-Ever Solo Album, Shall We Gather
A Collection of American Art Songs Celebrating Resilience and Togetherness.
Performed with his wife, pianist Irina Meachem, Shall We Gather is an emotional and heartfelt plea for a better, more tolerant world, through 15 art songs that offer a vision of America’s truly rich national character. Lucas Meachem says, “With these songs, I hope to offer a bit of hope for what truly makes us come together: our belief in the good of humanity and love for our neighbor.”
All Proceeds to Benefit the Meachem’s Perfect Day Music Foundation
With these songs, I hope to offer a bit of hope for what truly makes us come together: our belief in the good of humanity and love for our neighbor.
Lucas Meachem
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“There is much to enjoy in Lucas Meachem’s first solo album, ‘Shall We Gather,’ a plea for togetherness in a divided country. Meachem’s voice—a substantial and propulsive lyric baritone with pillowy edges—records beautifully.”
The New Yorker
All of the proceeds from Shall We Gather will go to the Meachems’ Perfect Day Music Foundation, a non-profit promoting diversity in classical music, to fund projects such as the Perfect Day Competition, which encourages young musicians to share through social media works by composers and poets who have been historically excluded.
“We gather to assert what unites us. In most of the songs presented here, observations about Americanness are implicit. Each lifts a particular moment, a facet of our collective character, highlighting our aspirations to resilience, care, humor, strength, justice, and so forth, the many qualities and beliefs that tie us together. That sentiment is made explicit by the first song on the album, Gene Scheer’s American Anthem. It asserts that what connects us as Americans is not some innate, unquestionable exceptionalism. Instead, we are gathered by a constant striving toward a more just and equal society, pursued through actions large and small. It is a gathering whose power is derived from its hopefulness and the commitment we make to ourselves to give our all to improve ourselves. And the warm embrace of that hopefulness is perhaps enough of a balm to tie us together until we can all gather safely and uncomplicatedly again.”
Dan Ruccia
Composer and arts critic
First Single, Out Now!
- Gene Scheer (arr. Lee Musiker) – American Anthem
- Arthur Farwell – “Song of the Deathless Voice” from Three Indian Songs
- William Grant Still (text by Leroy V. Brant) – Grief
- Kurt Weill – “Beat! Beat! Drums!” from Four Walt Whitman Songs
- John Musto (text by Langston Hughes) – “Litany” from Shadow of the Blues
- Richard Hageman (text by Franklin P. Adams) – The Rich Man
- Florence Price (text by Louise C. Wallace) – Night
- Jake Heggie (text by Gene Scheer) – “That Moment On” from Pieces of 9/11
Listen Now: Spotify → | Apple Music → - Carrie Jacob-Bonds (arr. Irina Meachem/Steve White) – A Perfect Day
- Traditional (arr. Steve White) – Oh, Shenandoah
- Traditional (arr. Charles Ives) – In The Mornin’
- Ricky Ian Gordon – We Will Always Walk Together
- Stephen Foster – Hard Times Come Again No More
- Aaron Copland – “The Boatman’s Dance” from Old American Songs
- Aaron Copland (text by Robert Lowry) – “At The River” from Old American Songs
Available Now!
Shall We Gather
Lucas Meachem + Irina MeachemListen Now
A Collection of American Art Songs Celebrating Resilience and Togetherness, Performed with Lucas’s Wife, Pianist Irina Meachem
Shall We Gather responds to the darkness of the pandemic and social distancing with the simple question of its title. Through fifteen art songs by and about a broad swath of people from the United States, Lucas and Irina Meachem offer a vision of Americanness centred around the things that call on us to gather and that we gather to call upon. Those things, they say, are rooted in an act of hope in the promise of resilience that underlies our national character. By channelling the feelings of those gatherings we are missing, we can, perhaps, conjure a greater sense of togetherness, of commonality.
Shall We Gather is an emotional and heartfelt plea for a better, more tolerant world, a world that one hopes will emerge a better place after the trauma of the pandemic.
A clear baritone whose fragments can pierce the soul, Lucas Meachem has it all.
Forum Opera
Grammy® Award-winning baritone Lucas Meachem is one of the most accomplished, in-demand singers of the moment, captivating audiences around the world with his “earnest appealing baritone” (The New York Times) and “commanding presence” (San Francisco Chronicle). “A rock star of opera” (Opera Pulse), Meachem’s 2019-20 season includes a house debut at Teatro Regio di Torino, four role debuts, and performances with Opéra national de Paris, Dallas Opera, Prague Philharmonia, San Francisco Opera, and Chicago Lyric Opera.
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