The Motown Project

The idea for the motown project first emerged during a long intercontinental flight from Europe to the US. The American mezzosoprano Alicia Hall Moran was on her way home after

having given a series of performances with The Bill T. Jones Company. It was 2009, fifty years since the founding of the legendary record label Motown and one of the in-flight radio channels was broadcasting famous Motown songs non-stop. Hall Moran listened for hours to the songs from her childhood, from her parents’ record collection. The songs turned out to be a goldmine for her. The range of the melodies, the language and the male falsetto style all fit her mezzosoprano voice and as a classically trained singer she recognised more and more musical similarities with opera, including the same grand and dramatic themes of love and loss.

Hall Moran describes the research that ensued as a ‘passionate love affair’. She was searching for a balance between the ‘melisma’ in soul and opera, passages of multiple notes sung on a single syllable of text. She interweaves the drama of opera arias with characteristic Motown tunes and creates an upbeat interplay between Marvin Gaye’s lyrics and Purcell’s drama. She starts with an English rendition of Sono Andati, from Puccini’s La Bohème about a love that is as big as the sea, and connects this with Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Equally effortlessly, she merges the chorus of the Four Tops’ I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) into Non So Più Cosa Son, an aria from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro about male helplessness in the face of female charms.

Musicologist Guthrie Ramsey wrote of the première of the motown project in New York’s The Kitchen: “The idea of thinking about Motown recordings as a Schubertian song cycle winding through the stages and associated emotions of a love affair — from declamation, assurance, doubt, disappointment, to anger — was brilliant. Hall Moran managed to draw attention to the poignant poetry of the featured songwriters’

Alicia Hall Moran has received international acclaim for her virtuosity and brilliant song interpretations. She embraces a broad musical repertoire ranging from classical and avant-garde, to jazz and Broadway, and crosses musical boundaries in concerts and partnerships that are renowned for their flair, intelligence and daring.

Her original work is deeply rooted in the traditions of her ancestors as well as her teachers, ranging from Hall Johnson, her great-uncle and legendary choir conductor and conservator of negro spirituals, to the distinguished vocal coaches who taught her, like Shirley Verrett and Adele Addison. At last year’s Holland Festival, she performed in Bryce Dessner’s Triptych, in which she appeared together with Asko|Schönberg. She partners with a constantly changing set of musicians on the motown project. In Amsterdam she will be accompanied by her husband Jason Moran on Fender Rhodes alongside various local musicians playing a range of instruments such as Taiko drums, bamboo flute and electric bass.