Iestyn Morris on releasing his debut album in uncertain times

Counter-tenor Iestyn Morris is set to release his debut album next week. Started during the pandemic, Romances is Morris’ passion project, and focuses on the Russian works which helped him develop his own voice and break out of the conventional counter-tenor mould. However, publishing an album of Russian music in a time when the public attitude towards the country and its culture is heavily affected by Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine has raised some issues. I sat down with Morris to learn more about the issues and disappointments he faced throughout this process and find out why he feels this music needs to be heard despite these challenging times.

Your debut album of Russian romances will be released on 26 April. Why did you choose to focus on this repertoire?

Throughout the pandemic I found myself gravitating towards the Russian romances – poetry and songs which I don't get to perform often but are nonetheless a passion for me. The album is a project I’d always jokingly said I’d do and now my diary was completely bare, so I had the time to do it.

I lost some preparatory concerts for this project due to the pandemic, but I had to test this repertoire live. The recording space, the Menuhin Hall in Surrey, was brilliant. They gave me the hall every Thursday in August 2022 and I live streamed a concert every week as a song festival before I recorded. This practice helped me group the songs thematically in terms of life, longing, love and loss, all feelings we experienced throughout the pandemic.

For my voice type as a counter-tenor this is an unusual project, actually I'm pretty sure it's a world first – I don't think a dedicated romance album has been recorded by a counter-tenor before. This repertoire developed my own operatic voice. Earlier on in my career I thought I would end up doing what people expect a counter-tenor to do – being the second counter-tenor in every Handel opera or making animal or ghost noises – but actually I decided to use my full operatic technique to bring as much tonal variety and dynamic range as everyone else on stage. It was the Russian repertoire that gave me that choice so this album is my thanks to that repertoire.

Your album charts the growing self-confidence of Russian song-writing over a seventy-five-year period – were you anxious about releasing an album that shows Russia in a positive light at a time when public sentiment is leaning the other way due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

I have a lot more confidence now than I did then. At the time of the invasion it was the worst moment to be releasing a Russian romance album and there were a few weeks where Orchestras were cancelling performances of Russian music. Then there was a moment of calm where the sector decided instead to have a separation. There's a massive difference between a body of work that was made hundreds of years ago and the action of an autocratic regime.

I also saw each of the composers on this album as an individual. Every single one of these composers was an absolute hero in their own right and dealt with events similar to what’s happening now. They have all managed to live through war, have had to uproot their entire lives and become migrants. That's something we should not cancel; we have to celebrate those courageous voices. All those stories gave me the confidence to keep going.

Morris' weekly live-streamed concerts helped him prepare for the album by grouping the works thematically. (Image courtesy of Iestyn Morris) 

The album includes world first recordings of Prokofiev’s folk songs. Although set for mezzo, you received permission from the composer’s grandson to adapt the text to read from a male viewpoint – was this a difficult process?

I did have a lot of support from the Oleg Prokofiev Trust, which made this project possible, and I spoke to the composer's grandson, Gabriel Prokofiev, a composer himself, who gave his support to the changes. So, with my vocal coaches, we worked through the text changing it grammatically. We weren’t changing the message but there are a couple of moments, oddly, where you change the gender text and suddenly it does create a very different frisson, but it doesn't necessarily affect the message.

That gender change is probably the most ‘out there’ idea in this project because folk song in Russia is very gender specific. It seems to be the Russian existence for a man to go off and find work or go to war, so all the folk songs sung by men tend to be rather nostalgic – longing for home. In contrast, all the songs sung by women are either longing for the man that has gone away, or lamenting how hard their life is now that they're alone. A Russian audience wouldn’t expect those sentiments to be sung by a man, but it was exactly what I wanted to say during lockdown: I'm longing for the people I’m unable see.

Do you find that now, having watched Russia invade Ukraine in such a visible way on social media and the news, these songs resonate more deeply with you?

This socio-political angle for the album gives everything a new voice. I think seeing it happen in real time did certainly resonate with the folk songs, this idea of the Russian experience to be apart from your loved ones certainly gave a greater meaning to those songs and the current climate reaffirmed our understanding of the text. I find the most human way of understanding how another culture thinks is going straight through their song and poetry. This is where you get a separation of state and individuals. You can't just disregard everyone you have to find the human truth that lies in these individual stories.

The relationships you built with two cultural organisations in the run-up to this release unfortunately could not come to fruition – do you have any advice for musicians who are going through a similar period of disappointment?

There were lots of lots of cultural organisations which I suddenly couldn't approach, I definitely couldn't approach the Russian embassy or the consulate. I was also down to be the finalist in a song competition at Cadogan Hall but as all the judges were supposed to come over from Russia it’s been postponed.

However, my partner in crime on the disc is pianist Nigel Foster. He’s a Steinway artist himself, and so we were very fortunate to be able to get a space at Steinway Hall to do our launch recital.

These things are always going to happen. If I think I've got something set in stone, it no longer surprises me when I've got to find a different solution. My advice would be to practice resilience more than anything else. These cancellations are not a massive criticism of who you are, you’re just going down a different path. One door closes and another opens, but often you're the one having to open the door. This whole album wouldn't have happened unless I spent time doing funding applications and being proactive.

The Russian romantic repertoire helped Morris develop his operatic voice, leading to roles including Peter Pan in the Welsh National Opera's 2015 production of Peter Pan at the Royal Opera House © Clive Barda​

Finding the right label for this album took longer than expected because of the challenging political climate. How did you cope with this?

Before going into the recording process I'd tested my sales pitch on a lot of big names and they all said that this project is inherently interesting which gave me a lot of confidence in finding a label.

Then, of course, events overtook me, but the time I spent waiting for the right label to come along was an advantage. By the time Quartz got involved in the project I had my essay ready for them, along with all the translations in English and German. This gap also meant that events had moved on slightly and people realised that, while this conflict wasn’t going to be over in the next couple of weeks, we still had these amazing stories that we need to celebrate.

It took a long time, but I think you have to have faith that the right solution will come along. Rejection is an occupational hazard and as an artist you factor in a certain percentage of that, but when it's out of your hands and you're waiting on a producer to get back to you, that is a time when you just have to believe in the process.

Originally this project succeeded in spite of lockdown and now you’ve decided to forge ahead despite a new set of difficult circumstances – what is it about this album that has made you so determined to put it out into the world?

I feel this album brings a new interpretation to this music and I wanted to establish a new voice in the international conversation. The counter-tenor voice can be a romantic instrument and here is some romantic repertoire to prove it.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to do another Russian album, but I think I've demonstrated enough of a broad spectrum. I want to see more counter-tenors putting albums out there. I'm going to probably introduce a whole swathe of people to a repertoire they didn't know, or else I'm going to be reimagining a style that people are quite familiar with to help them realise that the counter-tenor voice is not just the preserve of the Baroque or the contemporary, it is a three-dimensional instrument in its own right and it's capable of tackling all those emotional challenges.

Romances is released on Quartz on 26 April. You can find out more and buy the album here.