Posted: 3/22/23 at 6:00pm
It seemed like over the years the top Broadway stars often had unusual, distinctive or odd sounding instruments - the kind of voice that you can immediately recognise them and the kind of voice that really can complete change how a song sounds (e.g. Ethel Merman, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, Marin Mazzie, Donna Murphy, Carol Channing, Elaine Stritch, Carolee Camello etc.).
I still struggle to find who the equivalents of these are today (maybe a couple such as Carmen Cusack come close and Katrina Lenk has elements of it), or who could be emerging to take this place. When we have had this discussion in the past there has been a suggestion that Broadway does not really cultivate this kind of talent anymore for a variety of reasons (e.g. theatre school training that makes everyone the same, changing audience expectations of what they want to hear from a voice etc.).
But this aside, can anyone recommend contemporary artists with unusual/odd vocals (either Broadway or Off Broadway, as long as I can hear a recording preferably!) I might be able to discover?
To be clear, examples of people that to me don't fall into this category (as much as I love some of these artists): Sutton Foster, Stephanie Block, Idina Menzel, Laura Osnses, Audra McDonald, Kelli O'Hara etc I think the key element might be unusual sounding vibrato (as opposed to either legit styles or that clean pop belt etc.)
