Justin Austin, baritone & Howard Watkins, piano

“Vocally impressive, verbally elegant, and duly seductive” (Opera News) , the “velvet-voiced” (The New Yorker) baritone Justin Austin makes his PCMS debut with pianist Howard Watkins, a leading vocal collaborator and assistant conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. At the heart of their program are selections from The Threepenny Opera , Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 satirical, jazz-infused critique of unbridled capitalism. Among other genre-bending works, Austin and Watkins also performs one of the rousing Walt Whitman poems Weill set to music after immigrating to the United States and two songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, one of which explores the tragic death of singer Marvin Gaye. Pre-Concert Talk with Michael Bolton, 6:30 pm in Comcast Circle