Lifting My Voice

May 15, 2014
An African-American opera star recalls her distinguished career.Hendricks grew up in the segregated South of the 1950s and '60s singing in church and school choirs with no particular desire to make a career in music, which she deemed "extracurricular." Instead, she studied math and science until a chance invitation to compete in auditions for the Metropolitan Opera permanently changed her life. She did not win, but the experience threw open doors to possibilities that eventually landed her a spot at Julliard. There, she worked with mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, who became her mentor and role model, and received instruction from the legendary Maria Callas. Hendricks began her extraordinary career as a performer and recording artist soon after leaving Julliard in 1974. Within three years of graduation, she had sung with every major orchestra and conductor in the United States and at major festivals and opera houses all over Europe, which became her permanent home in 1977. Twenty years into a career that included work on film versions of operas like Puccini's La boheme, Hendricks added to her vocal repertoire by learning how to sing jazz songs, which she debuted at Montreux Jazz Festival in 1994. Sensitive to human rights issues from an early age, Hendricks became involved with the United Nations and used her musical talents to call attention to social and political conflicts around the world, including the Bosnian war. By the late 1990s, she also created her own award-winning humanitarian organization dedicated to fostering peace and reconciliation. Hendricks' accomplishments and sincerity are genuinely laudable. However, her painstaking efforts to record every small detail of her career and life and point out the relationship those details have to a greater historical process are too excessive to make the narrative genuinely enjoyable.Operatically overdone.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2014

In this compelling autobiography, Hendricks recounts her journey from Stephens, AR, to opera stages all over the world. Born in 1948 in the South just before the advent of the civil rights movement, the author sang in the church where her father was a pastor and over the years her repertoire would grow to include opera, art songs, spirituals and jazz. One of the greatest influences on her singing was the mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, who taught her at both the Aspen Festival of Music and the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Hendricks has also worked with a number of noted conductors, among them James Levine, Georg Solti, and Leonard Bernstein. In the last four decades she has performed with renowned orchestras across the globe and sold 14 million albums. In 2005, she started her own record label, Ate Verum. This leading lyric soprano is also an astute observer of life around her and sets her own story in the context of historical events. Describing herself as a citizen of the world (she has lived in Europe since 1977), Hendricks is also a humanitarian, worked for the United Nations Committee for Refugees for 20 years, and is now its honorary Goodwill Ambassador. In 1998, she established the Barbara Hendricks Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation. VERDICT Fans of opera and vocal music will enjoy this absorbing narrative, as will anyone who likes to read about strong and accomplished women.--Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2014
Operatic soprano and concert singer Hendricks may not have been born a rebel (that came later) but she did possess an inherent quality, curiosity, that has kept her in good stead over the years. Growing up in Arkansas, she sang in her father's church, where African American spirituals spoke to her most directly. These simple songs, she writes, first taught me about our history of slavery and its inherent injustice. In this memorable memoir, Hendricks offers a firsthand view of the burgeoning civil rights movement, citing the infamous 1957 incident at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in which African American students were threatened with violence. From then on, she writes, although nothing in my personal life had changed, everything was different. Human rights became as vital to Hendricks as classical music. In 1987, she was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commission for Refugees, and in 1998, she founded the Barbara Hendricks Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation. The story of her journey from Arkansas pastor's daughter to international opera star is inspiring and important.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)