Giebler Musical Arts Fund

Tenor Brian Giebler and pianist Steven McGhee have been friends and musical collaborators since meetings as students at the University of Michigan in 2010. After their 2012 performance of Ivor Gurney’s piano quintet arrangement of Ludlow and Teme in Ann Arbor, the pair have wanted a chance to return to the work. The piece has stuck with them, and when a recording project was proposed, we felt strongly about creating our own recording of the piece. Together, they have created A Lad's Love, an album featuring works composed primarily within a twenty-year time period at the beginning of the 20th century, all by male, English composers and poets including Gurney, Benjamin Britten, A.E. Housman, W.H. Auden, and John Ireland. From this rich repertoire, we discovered John Ireland’s settings of Housman’s later poetry, including a solo piano “song” with a title taken from A Shropshire Lad, and Ian Venables’ recent setting of “Because I liked you better”. But a theme emerged that took us beyond Housman, and beyond Gurney’s experiences during the Great War, and allowed us to connect more deeply to these pieces. From Quilter’s pleading setting of Shelley to Britten’s settings of W.H. Auden which are bolder, more self-assured statements of desire, we found an array of songs that, to our minds, tell stories of repressed or unrequited love with such variety, and yet such consistent emotional intensity, that they fit together beautifully. All the works on this program are, therefore, unified by the depth of feeling expressed by the lover, not by the gender of the object of his affection, which is conspicuously not specified in any of the texts.

A project of this magnitude requires a significant amount of money. There are 7 world-class musicians, plus a producer and recording engineer, committing their time and talents to record these works. Additionally, a publicist and independent classical record label have jumped on board to help release this album.

 

We have a plethora of perks and incentives for donating, including an early-release copy of the disk, a private house concert with Brian and Steve, and the unique opportunity to get a specific song recorded just for YOU!

$3000 - Private House Concert (date and location to be agreed upon)

$1000 - Personal ‘Song of Choice’ Recording (request a song from Brian)
(following perks are cumulative)

$100 - Signed Copy of CD

$50 - Early-Release Copy of CD