Ivan Rebroff

I was visiting a few blog and livejournal sites and discovered that a hero of mine, Ivan Rebroff has passed away! It happened back in February this year.




He had the most amazing voice and I remember growing up, listening to his music. My parents had a selection of his records and it was through listening to his music that it encouraged me to sing too - badly, admittedly, but it helped cultivate my love of music.

His musical range was four and a half octoves, ranging from soprano to impressive bass registers. He was unique in that he learned to sing a lot of folk music from across the world, phonetically. I distinctly remember an LP we had of him singing Afrikaans folk songs. He made them sound wild and amazing, as opposed to the usually wrist slittingly depressive stuff the Afrikaans folk singers usually churn out.

What a loss to the world. Pavarotti and now Ivan Rebroff! I have noticed a distinct lack of decent classical music in my CD collection and have plans to remedy that shortly.

Long live the Nightingales.