BACK IN VALHALLA AGAIN

When Steven Stull '86E (Mas) set out to round up opera singers to join him on an album of country and western standards, he knew that many classical-music sheriffs would just as soon he got out of town before the overture began.

"I have something of a reputation for doing outlandish things that aren't exactly what the opera world considers along the straight and narrow," he says.

But sooner than Stull could say, "Vaya Con Dios," he had lined up eight other trained opera singers and 40 instrumentalists--many of them fellow Eastman graduates--who shared his eclectic interest in music.

The result is Opera Cowpokes, a 65-minute CD filled with such famously low-falutin pieces as "Riders in the Sky," "Don't Fence Me In," "Back in the Saddle Again," "Home on the Range," and "Happy Trails."

And while mixing yodels and mezzo-sopranos may give some purists pause, Stull says the album shows that two worlds that don't often interact can make beautiful music together.

"The whole idea was to have some fun and to show that opera singers can perform well in a range of styles," he says.

The album is the latest release from CRS/Barn Studios, a label that Stull and his friend Jeannine Goddard founded in 1990 in Ithaca, New York. As its name implies, the label's offices (which include a recording studio) are housed in a barn on an organic produce farm owned by Stull's parents.

The album also is the latest to follow his career-guiding principle of not being fenced in by musical boundaries.

While working on his master's degree in voice at Eastman, he found that his high-baritone/ low-tenor range worked well in different musical styles.

But he quickly discovered that the business side of music was not always open to crossover work.

"There are factions in the opera world that still say if you sing opera, then you can't sing musical theater," Stull says. "And if you do sing musical theater, then you can't sing serious music."

While his operatic credits include work with the Glimmerglass Opera and the Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh, Stull also enjoys breaking out of the mold singing ragtime songs with the Erie Philharmonic, and Rodgers and Hammerstein with the Rochester Philharmonic.

"I tend to get a lot of work doing music that requires a certain amount of technique to do well, but where you also need to be able to leave off the technique so that it matches the right style," he says.

"I would rather sing a wide range of material than be limited to just one style."

On another note, Stull also was a featured singer and the producer for The Pulse of an Irishman: Irish and Scottish Songs arranged by Beethoven (also on the CRS/Barn Studios label).

The album grew out of his work at Eastman researching the roughly 200 British folk songs that Beethoven arranged (many with lyrics by the Scottish poet Robert Burns).

Discovering that there were very few recordings of this relatively unremarked-upon area of Beethoven's musical output, Stull decided to make his own.

In putting the Cowpokes album together, Stull again called on tenor Todd Geer '90E, a featured singer on the earlier album, as well as instrumentalists Gordon Stout '74E, '80E (MM), Harold Reynolds '89E (DMA), Elizabeth Simkin '90E (MM), and Liis Ambegaokar Grigorov '85E.

The sessions were a lot of fun, he says.

"The classical players loved hearing the spontaneity of the popular musicians and the popular musicians were blown away by the technical ability and sound of the singers," he says.

And there is more crossover than meets the eye--or ear. Several of the songs include operatic quotes courtesy of composer Mark Simon. Aficionados of both genres may be pleasantly surprised to learn, for example, that Puccini's "Girl of the Golden West" and Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1 are fitting grace notes to "Home on the Range."

Such surprises are music to Stull's ears.

"People didn't know what to make of me, but I'm beginning to get more calls because I'm getting known as someone who is willing to try something new.

"The thing that used to be seen as holding my career back is now seen as the thing that's helping it along."

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