Artist Spotlight: Meet Erik Hundtoft

As we count down the days until our cabaret-inspired fundraiser, Dirty, Stupid Music, we turn the spotlight toward some of the artists featured on the show. This week we chatted with baritone vocalist Erik Hundtoft.

Unless otherwise credited, all photos in this post were captured by Kenton Waltz Photography

Can you tell me a little bit about how you got started in music?

There was never much thought about “what do I want to do? What do I like to do?” because I was always doing music and theatre. 

I got attention for it early—we [singers] are loud people. I sang in a lot of special choirs and performed in drama productions. When I was in high school I was offered a scholarship to study music, and again in college to keep studying. I sort of followed it because it was the thing that was getting me attention—though I definitely put more effort into it than anything else, too.

What do you find compelling about singing?

Still from David Lynch’s surreal drama series, “Twin Peaks”

I look deeply into things. I like a lot of what David Lynch does; the way he looks deep into stories. I like thinking about problems, asking how we can find empathy for people we disagree with. In the same way David Lynch’s movies are often these mythological stories—stories that mean something beyond the surface-level actions we see taking place—when you’re performing those same kinds of puzzles are present. The puzzles of using poetry, using abstract language. When you are using these kinds of nonstandard means of communicating, you’re allowed to talk about complex topics and look deeper into something you might otherwise avoid.

I like that problem. I like that problem of “what's actually going on here?” and to present it honestly–even though you might not necessarily agree with what it is that your character is saying.

So, as an artist who is interpreting these works, do you often start with the lyrics or with the music first when you’re learning a piece?

The lyrics are fundamental to what it is that we do. I think the real magic is how composers make sense of those lyrics in their setting of their text—and how we as artists, as singers, can interpret that to take it further. I don’t believe that there’s a hierarchy here or that one is necessarily more important than the other, but it does usually start with the poet or lyricist.

It can be a very compelling challenge—how do we decide which word of a lyric deserves the emphasis? It’s not so much how can I say this in a dramatic way, but rather how can I find the meaning that's present within here? So it's not something that you can just look at that particular line and know the answer, you have to look at the whole of the work to understand the context in which that moment occurs and then you under then you then you know how to present it.

“I remember at the last Dirty, Stupid Music I sang a piece that had this wonderful rising screaming line—a great example of these elements all working together.

The last Dirty, Stupid was a really beautiful program.”

What does your day-to-day practice looks like? What is your process for getting into a piece? 

Everyone has their own approach, but for me I don’t do a lot of research independent of what’s on the page—the music itself is often what tells you what the composer thinks is important. I'm very ear focused—I spend a lot of time with recordings and comparing it to what’s on the page before I start really working on my own decisions about how to best capture the piece.

There’s a lot of beautiful things in a piece of music that are really only seen when you're looking at it deeply—not just note-to-note, but in the macro sense as well. The bigger picture can really inform the individual moments within it.

Are there directors you’ve worked with who master balancing that larger picture with those smaller details?

Nick Fox at Portland Opera is excellent, and really demands a lot from his performers.

Katherine FitzGibbon, here at Resonance, is very intentional in making sure that the whole room is feeling okay about where they are with the music and what they're doing as artists. She has a way of really demanding a lot of people, too. In fact, I think she often demands more of their choir than they're actually able to accomplish—she really pushes, in a good way, the boundaries of what the singers think they’re capable of musically.

I’ve done a couple of gigs with Shohei Kobayashi, and I see him having really some tremendous talent as well. I think he's budding into a great conductor.

They all excel in different ways, but they are all excellent in what they do.

What groups do you perform with currently?

This last year I started getting more deeply involved with Cappella Romana, and I’m a regular at St Mary's Cathedral and Oregon Catholic Press recording sessions. Jecca Jazz is a new jazz group I'm involved in run by Jessica Israels and her father Chuck—that also includes Dirty, Stupid cast members Brandon and Shohei—we're just getting started but making great music! I have also really loved my time with Portland Opera, and Resonance of course.

I’m thankful to still be working this much—there's definitely young, very talented singers coming up in the area, so local ensembles don't necessarily need to keep hiring the old dogs. But, contrary to what people might think of older singers, physiologically I feel as though this next decade is really where my voice has been building up to be—it’s at the best it’s been in so many ways.

How did you first get connected with Resonance? What keeps you coming back?

My first gig with Resonance was their performance of The Wedding by Stravinsky back in 2010. Kathy needed a baritone and she saw me singing Carmina Burana with the Oregon county fair—and that was enough for her to decide to have me on.

“And I’ve just been so grateful for Resonance and the opportunities that I’ve gotten with them.”

One of the things I love is the name “Resonance,” because I really think it captures a few very important things about what we do as singers. When music is most meaningful, at its most powerful, is when it gets an idea to resonate within a human being. Your form is literally vibrating, and—while I don’t know that we can define exactly where that energy goes and how it transfers, we do benefit from it tremendously. This is a way to change people—-I believe very strongly that music is anti-capitalistic inherently—and I think the effect of having a message come to us and change who we are gives us an opportunity to reflect—where are we now, who are we, what matters to us? Now the listener, or even the performer, is stuck with having to reconcile this new information with what they thought before. It gives you an opportunity to become something else, to grow.

Single tickets for Dirty, Stupid Music—showing twice on January 15th at Curious Comedy—are on sale now. CLICK HERE to visit the event page for more information, or CLICK HERE to learn about the rest of our season.