Yma Sumac is a singer to obsess about.
When I was fourteen I read an Encyclopedia Of Music my mum had bought from a door to door salesman. A sultry Yma Sumac sprang from the pages. The mention of her almost five octave range impressed.
Ali McGregor appeared in a mist of lighting, made up and dressed to be Yma, then dazzled us with a display of Yma's extraordinary technique. After venturing into extremes of the top, middle and bottom ranges, in a tapestry of vocal colours, she launched into the fourth voice, a voice an octave or more above the usual soprano's, to hit an A or B flat above high C at forte then faded it to almost nothing in a chromatic descent. The audience gasped.
As she relayed Yma's life, Ali revealed her obsession with Yma, how she first heard her voice and wondered if it was human, her search for Yma, her two flights to LA to meet the custodian of Yma's estate. She began on Yma's life, her birth and adolescence in Peru to a tragedy of exploitation of a unique vocal and compositional talent forgotten by all but a few. Ali told us of Yma's huge record sales, her two marriages to a man who betrayed her in several ways, her not being giving writing credit on her songs so she received no royalties, her comebacks and eventual testiness with the audience.
She outlined the developments in Yma's style from bird song and jungle noises, to the hardly Peruvian but bankable Cuban mambo, to mambofied arias such as 'Die holle Rache' from 'The Magic Flute'.
And was Ali McGregor able to match Yma at her best? She intrigued the audience just as much as Yma and her music had. If she didn't match her range exactly she must have come very close. Most importantly, she alerted the audience to a great singer. I took a friend and when we spoke the next day he enthused about all the Yma clips he'd YouTube-d as soon as he got home.
Did the audience like it? Near the end Ali asked how many of us knew of Yma before the show. It seemed less than a tenth of the audience had. A great many more gave Ali and Yma a standing ovation.
