Geoff Castellucci

[igenlode]

I recently came across singer Geoff Castellucci and was very impressed. He is not just a spectacularly low bass singer but has a lovely upper range (he calls himself a baritone who happens to have a bass range) added to a soaring falsetto which means he can basically multi-track himself into an entire barbershop quartet. And he also happens to have an expressive, humorous face and acting talent to go with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzlT80jQ3lo

Brilliant production of the "Oogie Boogie Song" from "Nightmare Before Christmas" (a film I don't even much like...) starring Geoff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiTguw5lBHM

[Edit: and "The Headless Horseman" as well. It's not just good singing, it's good performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rrg0ksSQdw ]


Also, Freddie Mercury sings soprano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gO8rPCBo8o
I was never much impressed by his famous collaboration with Montserrat Caballé (which just makes the artificiality of opera all the more incongruous), but this is astonishing -- this must be what the great castrati sounded like, neither the ethereal tone of a counter-tenor nor the clarion ring of a tenor, but the soprano range with a full male physique behind it.

Comments

[capri0mni]

I found Geoff Castellucci last year, I believe, when I stumbled upon a VoicePlay (The group he sings with, when he's not singing solo) cover of Mr. Blue Sky (He's not heavily featured in that one, but that's how I found him).

What really impresses me is his clear enunciation while singing. Usually, YouTube's automatic closed caption generator is so confused by singing that it just gives up and says "[Music]." But on his videos the algorithm can keep up with a good 90% of it. His cover of the Bing Crosby Christmas song "Mele Kalikimaka" is a good example of that. https://youtu.be/zT894S_zoD0 The song that's just pure "cheer me up" material, however, is his cover of "Bare Necessities" https://youtu.be/GaHV8yILG2k from The Jungle Book (the auto-captioning on that is about 50-50 accurate and word salad.

[erimia]

Ah, I remember coming across the video of Castellucci singing "Sixteen Tons". Basses are not my thing, but he is impressive.