I Will Wait For You CD

British soprano Lesley Garrett has achieved enormous popularity in her homeland, and her recordings routinely appear on the Pop Album charts. And while she could be classified as a "crossover" artist, her classical music credentials are impressive, having studied at the Royal Academy of Music and going on to engagements with the Welsh National Opera and later joining the English National Opera.

Garrett offers a varied program with I WILL WAIT FOR YOU, which includes art songs, popular songs, arias, and even a spiritual. She displays her operatic pedigree with arias such as "Casta Diva," "Donde lieta usci," and "Parigi o cara," a duet with Ramón Vargas. And where most classically trained artists tend to overwhelm pop material, Garrett shows restraint and sensitivity and works to find the nuances in songs such as "Night and Day," "La vie en rose," and "September Song." She does, however, know when to unleash the vocal fireworks such as in the stirring Rodgers and Hammerstein anthem "You'll never walk alone." A highlight of the album is her moving performance of "He wishes for the cloths of heaven," a setting of a Yeats poem written for her by Karl Jenkins.