Baritone Mel Braun is a long-time colleague and collaborator at the University of Manitoba’s Desautels Faculty of Music in Winnipeg. Braun is well known for his Bach singing, with performances and broadcasts that have taken him all across Canada. Many new music premieres, along with innovative recital projects and choral collaborations, keep him busy as a performer. As a voice teacher and mentor, he has seen many of his students go on to rewarding professional careers. Together, Braun and Laura Loewen have toured Canada and commissioned numerous works, always evolving as recitalists and collaborators.
Albums
By The Red
Release Date: July 10, 2015
Catalog Number: BR8940
Catalog Number: BR8940
Folk Music
Vocal Music
Percussion
Piano
Voice
Life on the Canadian prairie is vital, challenging, and poetic, and on their debut Big Round Records release, BY THE RED, pianist Laura Loewen and baritone Mel Braun - joined by Fred Redekop and Jay Taylor, otherwise known as the mandolin-bass duo Big and Dinky - present a glimpse of the variety of folk music found in Manitoba's Red River Valley. Drawn from French Canadian, Métis, German Mennonite, Scots, and cowboy culture, and supplemented by the art song-like settings of John Greer, Larry Warkentin, Chester Duncan, Robert Turner, and Heidi Ugrin, these works relate stories that 200 years of life in the Red River Valley have generated. Tales of sod-busting pioneers, exile, sacrifice, summer idyll, and love, all leavened by a sense of humor that allows life to flourish on the prairie, are explored on this dramatic and nostalgic collection.