Gunn

“Be still, listen to the stones of the wall. Be silent, they try to speak your name,” the poet and monk Thomas Merton wrote in his poem “In Silence.” Quoting those words, baritone Nathan Gunn tried to explain the unorthodox idea of building his upcoming recital around the concept of silence. “All the songs move toward the idea that there’s an entire world screaming at us,” he said in a recent interview, “but we can’t hear it—because we don’t listen.”

Merton, not coincidentally, figures prominently in the recital that Gunn and his wife, Julie, will perform in Zankel Hall on April 15. The program includes Five Songs on Poems of Thomas Merton and “For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943” (text by Merton), both by the contemporary American composer Frank Ferko, along with a now-canonical setting of medieval monks’ words: Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs.

It may seem unusual for a singer and performer to be drawn to texts that describe silence and solitude, but Gunn didn’t pursue a career as a performer for the usual reasons. “I’m actually quite introspective,” he said. “I don’t perform just to be seen on stage, but because I find it’s the way I communicate best with people.”

Communication and connection are key goals for Gunn, but for audience members who aren’t familiar with the etiquette of a classical recital, some of the unwritten rules and codes can be intimidating, hindering communication. “People who aren’t used to the musical world,” Gunn says, “can get nervous about what to wear, when to clap.” To try to make the audience more comfortable, the Gunns incorporate multimedia elements into the upcoming recital: a dancer and projected images—modes of expression that don’t require sound to be effective, though sound is often the perfect complement. “Zankel Hall is an ideal place to try new things,” Nathan Gunn said; “it attracts an audience willing to experience new things.”

Nathan and Julie Gunn have worked together since college and are now both professors at the University of Illinois. “We have very similar ideas about music,” Gunn said, “and she’s a brilliant pianist.” Of course, there are also some non-musical perks to making music with one’s spouse: “She looks pretty too, and that always helps.”