Wilkinson sees singing career take flight with CD

NAHANT – He gave up micro-electric engineering to pursue songs – a decision that has taken local baritone Donald Wilkinson from performing at Symphony Hall to pursuing elusive birds on Alaskan islands. But this weekend, he will be performing in Nahant to celebrate the release of his first solo and commercial recording.”I thought I always had a pretty good voice and wanted to be a singer, but I knew how horrible the life of a poor musician could be,” Wilkinson said. “It wasn’t horrible – it was just hard going from a salaried engineering job to just gigging. But I’m still doing it.”It keeps him busy.Locally, he sings at the St. Thomas Aquinas Church Saturday afternoon service and for many local groups, including the Ellingwood Chapel Series, where he will perform tonight. Farther afield, Wilkinson performs every Sunday with Emmanuel Music in Boston, and regularly performs with the Boston Camarata and the Handel and Haydn Society. He also teaches privately at Phillips Andover and Harvard University.He added that he is always rehearsing for something – whether a concert, or an opera performance with some of the biggest names in the classical music world, including solo performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Seiji Ozawa and the role of Jesus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, led by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison, among others.He is currently learning the music to a new opera called “334 Bunnies,” which has such lyrics as “they eat their own droppings ? don’t you think that’s kind of gross?”But while he has appeared in several classical recordings of concerts and operas, he has just started promoting his first solo compact disc and decided to focus on music that might be more familiar to audiences.”I grew up singing these songs – I must have belted out ‘Ol’ Man River’ 800 times,” he said, recalling summers as a singing waiter at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire.Other selections on the CD include songs by Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Lerner and Loewe.He said he has modest ambitions for the recording – hoping his producer makes enough money for a second effort and it leads him to some interesting gigs. But it is through these benefits of the first recording that Wilkinson said he hopes to further his interest in songs – or sights – of the avian variety.In 1990, he received a fellowship at The Tanglewood Music Festival and was first exposed to the bird species of the Berkshires. Today, he is one of those infamous “list” birders seeking out a goal of positively identifying at least 700 species of birds in North America. He is at 699, and his birding expeditions are ways to help fund trips to find – and provide extra sets of ears and eyes to find – the few species he hasn’t seen.And sometimes, those are in odd places. He’s gone to remote Alaskan islands to find rare seabirds, and then he was too busy in rehearsal to go see an Argentinian species of gull that somehow found itself on the Coney Island boardwalk.As for his singing, he hopes his next recording features bird songs – warbled by himself. He hopes to record Maurice Ravel’s “L’histoire naturelle,” which incorporates songs from four bird species, along with Schubert songs, and wants to solicit bird-themed work from modern composers.And while he’s checked off all the bird species that frequent Nahant, it nevertheless provides the perfect habitat for a man of his interests, he said. Boston is a classical music mecca, he said, and the island is a welcome spot for migratory bird species to rest their wings during their long seasonal commutes.He knows the feeling.”I love living in Nahant,” he said. “I love getting out of traffic from Boston and going ‘ahh.’Donald Wilkinson will perform tonight at 7:30 p.m. as part of The Ellingwood Chapel Series. Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and students. For more information, please call Jim Walsh at 781-367-2007.Cyrus Moulton can be reached at [email protected]