Tag: Art Song

Laura Strickling triumphant in “Opera News”

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Congratulations Laura! Opera News remains the crème de la crème of publications for serious classical singers.  Opera News wrote a glowing review for Sasha Cooke’s Yarlung debut album If You Love For Beauty, and now Opera News celebrates Laura Strickling and Joy Schreier for their debut album Confessions.  Laura and Joy we are so happy for you. Many thanks for your great artistry Laura and Joy, and thanks to Randy Bellous for your support as our executive producer. Not only did Joanne Sydney Lesser label Confessions with the Opera News Critic’s Choice Award, but opens her article: Laura Strickling, an experienced interpreter of new music, has put together and exemplary recital of world-premiere recordings.  Strickling is a compellingly honest performer, whose rich, expressive soprano conveys vulnerability with a balance of shimmering tone and unaffected diction.  Both Strickling and her superbly emotive pianist Joy Schreier ring every nuance out of these Continue Reading →

Soprano Laura Strickling pays “homage to the feminine, gathering her audience in a warm and brilliant embrace of sisterhood” –American Record Guide

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American Record Guide  March/April 2021, pages 181-182 Confessions Laura Strickling, soprano; Joy Schreier, piano Composers: Assad, Lyons, Cipullo, Kirsten, Djupstrom, Larsen Randy Bellous: Executive Producer Yarlung catalog number 18798     61 minutes Laura Strickling dedicated this album to the memory of her aunt, Janet Strickling, who was a powerful supporter of the album but died from Covid-19 before she could hear the finished product. This album feels like an homage to femininity: the lovely, the messy, the American Record Guide 181 graceful, the rough-around-all-the-edges, and the sisterhood we share with others, with people who encountered it before us and have helped us navigate our own womanhood— and the legacy that we write in the colorful story of our actions and dramas and innermost contemplations. This is a collection of poignant works, pieces whose words and notes exhibit storytelling at its finest. If you see yourself in the texts, you’ll yourself feel Continue Reading →

Tim Bostwick writes about Laura Strickling’s “Confessions”

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Confessions is available at Yarlung Records, HDTracks, Amazon, Spotify and Apple. Tim Bostwick interviewed soprano Laura Strickling for NATS in 2020, asking her thoughts on surviving as a musician during Covid-19.  It is a terrific interview, and you can find it here.  Toward the end of Tim’s article, he reviews Laura’s new album Confessions, available as a physical CD, in high res as a download and on myriad streaming services.  The article describes the album in glowing terms: Confessions includes “four song cycles and two additional numbers. Clarice Assad’s Confessions provides the title and the initial cycle. Next, Songs of Lament and Praise by composer, visual artist, and singer, Gilda Lyons, followed by Tom Cipullo’s How to Get Heat Without Fire. Amy Beth Kirsten’s stand-alone To see what I see gives a powerful setting to Shakespeare’s Ophelia from Hamlet. In a lush portrayal of Sara Teasdale poems, Michael Djupstrom’s Three Continue Reading →