By Randall G. Mielke
For Sun-Times Media
May 16, 2014 4:00PM
3 Redneck Tenors Little Theatre Preview
3 REDNECK TENORS
8 p.m. May 16
Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora
Tickets, $40
(630) 896-6666
paramountaurora.com
Performances in the 3 Redneck Tenors show could be considered a cross between comedian Jeff Foxworthy and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. The show, a fictional tale of how three Southern boys learn to sing and wind up performing at Carnegie Hall, features operatic voices sprinkled with redneck humor.
“The show traces our characters’ roots and how we got our start,” said Blake Davidson, who has been part of the 3 Redneck Tenors for four years. “Our characters watched TV shows, so we do TV theme songs. That’s how we learned to sing. So there are different styles of music presented which culminate in a Carnegie Hall concert. It is the history of the characters in the show. The first half of the show is the story; the second half is the concert.”
The 3 Redneck Tenors will appear on May 16 at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. The trio features Davidson, original member Matthew Lord and Jonathan Frugé, who has been with the group for two years.
The show originated in 2006 when Lord put a twist on a popular craze.
“At the time, Three Irish Tenors were big, and also the Twelve Irish Tenors and The Australian Tenors,” Lord said. “It was always these guys singing in unison, which was a little boring. For our show we wear mullets and we eliminated a tenor and created a baritone so we could do harmony.”
Lord, who has been performing opera and classical songs for 28 years at such venues as the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the New York Metropolitan Opera, joined forces with two friends and started performing at benefits. An agent saw their performance and booked them in cities across the country.
“It just took off from there,” Lord said.
After the producers of NBC-TV’s “America’s Got Talent” saw a clip of them on the Internet, the 3 Redneck Tenors performed on the show.
“We were on the second season in 2007 when David Hasselhoff, Sharon Osbourne and Piers Morgan were the judges,” said Lord, who performed on the show with then-current members Alex Bumpas and John Wilkerson. “We wound up in the Top 10. That show put us in front of 20 million people.”
Although the personnel has changed over the years, one thing remains constant.
“The singing is first rate,” Lord said. “We work as a real ensemble. We don’t do parody. Even with the TV theme songs we sing them as well as we can sing them. We do the songs with a recorded-track orchestra. The singing is live and the jokes are live, even the bad ones.”
And Lord thinks the 3 Redneck Tenors are on a bit of a mission.
“The show plays as well in Connecticut as it does in Alabama,” he said. “What has happened is that places like the Baltimore Opera Company have closed and the San Diego Opera will possibly close, so in a small way we are showing people what real opera voices are and what opera singers can do.”
Article source: http://couriernews.suntimes.com/entertainment/27425506-421/3-redneck-tenors-add-humor-to-the-show.html