Tuesday, July 29, 2003

By Andrew Druckenbrod, Post-Gazette Classical Music Critic

Nomo'tenors?

One of the more intriguing groups to jump on the bandwagon of the Three Tenors success, Three Mo' Tenors are finally visiting Pittsburgh, only under a different name. The group appearing is now Cook, Dixon & Young, the last names of the three guys formerly named Mo'. For the record, their first names are Victor, Rod & Thomas, respectively.

	The name of the Three Mo' Tenors has been changed to the last names of its members, Rod Dixon, Victor Trent Cook and Thomas Young, to better demonstrate the group's musical range and the singers' individuality. Cook, Dixon & Young, formerly Three Mo' Tenors Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown When: 8 p.m. tomorrow Tickets: $25-$75; 412-392-4900

It's the recent result of the tenors' moving from their old production company to their own, says manager Darryll Brooks, but the change was welcome. "It can be a play on words, which is good to get someone's attention, but there is much more to these fine singers," he says. "Now their individuality will be better presented."

"Everyone is getting tired of the tenor thing," says Victor Trent Cook, who also says the name pigeonholed the three black singers into being an African-American ensemble when they wanted the focus to be on their ability to sing many styles. "That name has a connotation with the mo' being Motown or African American. But it [was meant] to mean tenors that can do mo' than just classical."

The three singers, who give a concert for the delegates of the National Urban League Conference tonight and a public concert tomorrow, both at Heinz Hall, won't be changing the main ingredient that has brought them appeal: versatility. They touch on no fewer than seven musical genres, from opera to Broadway to jazz to soul to gospel to blues to spirituals.

The scarcity of African-American opera singers working in the United States makes hearing three high-quality tenors on one stage all the more amazing. "We are making history right about now," says Cook. All three of the singers have accomplished operatic careers. Their versatility comes from both the harsh realities of the music business -- "One of the reasons we had to do other forms of singing was that it is hard to get opera roles [as African Americans]" -- and their family backgrounds -- "We are classically trained, but we all are preachers' children," says Cook.

Cook adds even more diversity to the mix by being a countertenor. That's a singer who uses head voice and falsetto more than the chest, which allows him to sing in the range of an alto or soprano. It's a rare gift, but you could see it coming from his time as a boy alto, once soloing Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.

"I had a real hard time when my voice changed," says Cook. "I didn't sing for a year. I was depressed because I didn't know where my voice was, and it hadn't changed into an ordinary voice."

For Cook, Dixon & Young, the real point of the concerts is not to show off a menu of music but to expose people to as much variety as possible. "One of the joys that we have in concert is that we are bringing so many people together in the audience," says Cook. "Because of the powers that be, people don't get to listen to other music .... There is a whole audience that misses the music that we sing.

"We just do good music that has no race, gender or color."

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