Jubilant Sykes

LAKE PLACID – It’s a rare baritone who can transition from the Apollo Theater in Harlem, to the Deutsche Opera Berlin. Those, along with the Metropolitan Opera, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, the Hollywood Bowl and London’s Barbican Centre are among many famous, but to Jubilant Sykes, familiar venues.

He will chalk up another on Sunday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts when he headlines a program of music written almost entirely by African Americans with the Lake Placid Sinfonietta.

The Grammy-nominated singer hails from Los Angeles. A soprano in his youth, he turned away from singing when his voice changed, but a teacher “turned me on to classical music,” said Sykes in an interview on the radio program “All Things Considered.”

His resultant career spans pop, jazz, gospel and classical. On the classical side, he won first place in the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in Los Angeles, later performing as featured soloist with many famous orchestras and leading conductors including Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin and Cristoph Eschenbach.

A review by Gramaphone of his performance of “The Celebrant of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass,” which was nominated for a Grammy, states: “Jubilant Sykes is the best of all possible Celebrants. There can be few roles in contemporary music theatre that demand so many sides of a performer.” Exercising another one of those sides, on his CD “Wait for Me,” he has recorded God Only Knows originally done by the Beach Boys, It Might as Well be Spring by Richard Rogers and If I Should Fall Behind by Bruce Springsteen.

Sinfonietta Music Director Ron Spigelman recently noted that singer also has some acting chops, having appeared with Cuba Gooding Jr., in “Freedom.” Tickets are $25 and $5 for youth 18 and under and may be obtained online at lakeplacidsinfonietta.org or the lakeplacidarts.org, at the LPCA box office at 518-523-2512 or at Gallery 46 on Main Street.