Gilbert Price--Velvet on His Voice

It was something over a year ago when I first heard The Voice. I went down to Greenwich Village to hear Langston Hughes' musical panorama Jerico-Jim Crow, performed in a building that does double duty as a church and a synagogue.

The young male lead was listed in the program as Gilbert Price. When he appeared on stage, I saw a fellow of fairly small frame, strikingly handsome, with dark brown eyes, a winning smile and shining white teeth. But the moment he started to sing, I was hardly conscious of anything else except The Voice. From that modest physique issued a radiant stream of ravishing beauty and expressivity, which, when the occasion demanded, expanded to so enormous a size as to seem almost a physiological impossibility.

When he finished "Freedom Land," bedlam broke out in the audience (as it did, I'm told, at every single performance). The significance of the day was not lost on me. At show's end, I realized that I had been listening to the most marvelous natural baritone I had ever encountered in my life, and that I had experienced no such frissons from a singer since Flagstad and Milanov were at their peaks.

Many voices are impressive at one dynamic level and not at another. But here was a voice of supreme quality throughout all gradations, from full-bodied fortissimo down to a barely audible pianissimo. My evaluation was hardly unique, and Price's performance won him the Theatre World Award. (Unfortunately, the recording of the show was a limited special edition and is not commercially available.)

Now, at age 22, Price is a featured performer in Roar of the Grcasepaint--Smell of the Crowd, the new Anthony Newley musical currently on tour in a pre-Broadway tune-up. The Variety reviewer singled out Price's "lusty, full-voiced" singing of "Feeling Good" as the production's "real musical click." That's Price's only song, but it indicates well a little of what he can do.

(If you can't get to the show, which will continue playing here until April 10, you'll find the number on Side 2, Band 6 of the record, already on sale in the stores and well worth acquiring since the score in general is uncommonly good and often delightfully witty.)

The local critics were not deaf at last week's Boston opening, either. Elinor Hughes (Herald) found the number "just great." Kevin Kelly (Globe) cited Price's "vivid performance" and said he "sings with enough power and feeling to bring the roof down, and he does." Alta Maloney (Traveler) called it "a whopper of a show-stopper, sung in a voice that made chills go up and down the spine." T.K. Morse (Patriot Ledger) found him "glorious." Bradford Swan (Providence Journal) said Price sang "superbly," and Donald Cragin (Worcester Telegram) felt he performed "with the verve of one who has practiced generations for the moment." Elliot Norton (Boston Record) spoke of his "huge voice of great resonance," and later expanded his praise extensively in his half-hour TV discussion of the show. The show's two stars each wore a body microphone in order to be heard, but Price neither used nor needed one to reach every nook of the mamouth cavern that is the Shubert Theatre.

One song can do the trick, too. I think back just three years to I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in which Barbra Streisand had one solo, "Miss Marmelstein," the only redeeming feature of a tawdry show. And look where it landed her! If there is any justice, Gilbert Price will be the talk of Broadway the day after the show opens there on May 16, and from that time forward the name of Price in musical circles will no longer automatically mean Leontyne.

Whence and whither this prodigy, I wondered. He turned out to be a warm, approachable person and a voluble conversationalist. He punctuates his talk frequently with such queries as, "D'you know what I mean?" and, on being reassured, hurries right on to another point.

Gilbert was raised in a tough section of Brooklyn, but managed to escape being contaminated by the rough-necks. At age 11, he went with his younger brother to Camp Molloy, a Catholic camp on Long Island, where one of the counselors wanted him to sing in the camp show. Gilbert was reluctant, but the counselor advised, "Just look at the light over your head and make believe you're in the shower." He looked up and sang, and the shower was one of loud applause. That day Gilbert discovered he had a fine soprano voice.

When he got to Eramus Hall High School, he turned into a strong, deep bass, and sang informally here and there--at a hospital or an illegal after-hours club. "After graduation four years ago, I had some scattered chorus and bit parts in summer stock and off-Broadway until I got a big role in Jerico-Jim. My voice range had moved up a bit, and I was a baritone there. It's still not stabilized. Right now my usable range goes from a bass' low E to a tenor's high C. Who knows?--maybe I'll wind up a dramatic tenor."

What about some professional coaching, then? "After high school," Gil replied, "I had some singing lessons from time to time, but I didn't find anyone I wanted to go to regularly."

Indeed it is perfectly true that finding the right voice teacher can be like finding the right spouse; one may have to court many candidates before the one-and-only turns up. "Finally, about the time I opened in Jerico-Jim a little over a year ago, I did find exactly the right teacher, Clair Gelda. She told me, 'You must be careful not to push to the point of losing the wonderful velvet on your voice.'" This "velvet," which is readily apparent in the restrained opening of "Feeling Good" in Roar of the Greasepaint, should not be confused with the quite different, if attractive, breathy tone characteristic of Belafonte or the late Nat King Cole.

"I know I've got some talent--but," Gil wisely adds, "I mustn't just coast along. I need to progress. At my age, I know it's easy to abuse or ruin a voice. I've got to have discipline. I want to know exactly how I do every single thing with my voice. And I want to get the training that will let me perform works in the classical repertory along with popular music and folk songs. I'd like to take some lessons in French and German and Italian, as well as learn something about different styles. All this is why I'm anxious to get back to New York and resume my regular singing lessons. I'm studying acting, too--but the most important thing now is my voice."

A large agency, General Artists Corporation, has just signed him, and, after Roar opens in New York, he ought to be much in demand. "I don't expect to keep doing Broadway musicals forever, though. There's a chance I may do a movie. What I'd really like to do is get sufficient preparation to do concert singing and maybe opera." So Gil may perhaps wind up having followed the reverse path of stars like Pinza and Traubel.

"Anyhow, I know I'll feel all right as long as I always have some further territory to explore."

How did Gil come to land the role in Roar? He auditioned like everybody else. Anthony Newley, the British creator and director and star of the show, said, "He's too young for the part and he's too short for the part." Why, then, was he cast? Newley had the right answer: "All he's got is the greatest bloody voice I've ever heard."