MUSIC : A Voice for American Music : Baritone Sanford Sylvan is at once populist and avant-gardist, dedicated recital artist and leading-edge opera favorite

To many, he’s the wheelchair-bound victim of Palestinian cruise ship hijackers in the controversial John Adams-Peter Sellars opera “The Death of Klinghoffer.” To others, he’s the gentle Chou En-lai of “Nixon in China.” And for some, he’s one of the musical pillars of Sellars’ trendy updatings of “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Cosi fan Tutte.”

But for baritone Sanford Sylvan, one of opera’s increasingly lauded young voices, such new American work is only part of the picture. A dedicated recital artist who boldly goes where the more sales-conscious fear to tread, Sylvan has aficionados beyond the chichi world of avant-garde opera.

A soft-spoken maverick, he’s won a following with his devotion to lieder, chamber music and American composers. “The recital persona is the real me, the musician that was in place before I met Peter,” Sylvan says of his two-track career. “Through the back flips of ‘Figaro,’ that lieder singer is always there. The issues of musical commitment are the same. Mozart informs Adams, which informs Mahler and Schubert.”

Says Adams, who composed “The Wound Dresser” with Sylvan in mind: “What’s refreshing about Sandy is that he’s resisted the kind of handling that goes on with younger singers, who get discovered and whom management pushes into the same realm singing the same repertoire. While he loves Schubert and Mozart and Bach, creating roles gives him a level of pleasure that also utilizes his extraordinary intellect.”

Sylvan, who was nominated for a 1990 Grammy for his recording of “The Wound Dresser,” has also released two 1991 recordings on the Nonesuch label and has several other discs due out in the near future.

He makes his Los Angeles recital debut at the Doheny Mansion on Friday, in an event sponsored by the Da Camera Society. The following week, April 16-19, Sylvan will join the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Adams conducting “The Wound Dresser” and the local premiere of his “El Dorado.” (The program also includes Adams’ arrangement of Liszt’s “The Black Gondola” and Britten’s “Sinfonia da Requiem”.)

Sylvan and pianist David Breitman’s Doheny recital will feature Schubert’s “Die schone Mullerin,” which the duo recently recorded for Nonesuch for fall release. Breitman will also play Schubert’s Three Piano Pieces, D. 946.

These are good times for artists like Sylvan. “We’re in a renaissance for vocal recital music in the last 10 years, although it’s been something of a struggle,” he says.

“Sometimes managers of concert series are reluctant to program vocal recitals, thinking they’re not popular. There will always be the parade of European artists, but now there are a lot of American singers singing recital music too.”

This newly warm welcome for home-grown talent is just part of a greater freedom in the music world. “At this point, everything is up for grabs,” Sylvan says. “Things are less narrowly defined than they were, which might be a way of saying that the musical Establishment is being opened up to accept a wider variety of forms.”

Such change, the baritone says, comes none too soon: “We must augment the masters with the work of our time. What will break down the barriers (of classical music and opera) even more is the opening up of the boundaries of the forms themselves.”

Sylvan grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and studied at Juilliard Prep and the Manhattan School of Music. During the mid-’70s, he came under the tutelage of soprano Phyllis Curtin, and in 1977, at age 23, he moved to Boston, where he continued his work with her.

Curtin instilled in Sylvan an appreciation of and commitment to music composed by living Americans, as well as the relatively unconventional belief that it is possible to sing elegantly in indigenous English.

“I was lucky that I studied with one of the great champions of American music,” Sylvan says of Curtin. “It’s hard to tell where her guidance and my love met. One of the things she gave me is a love of American English.”

Says Adams: “First and foremost he has a beautiful voice with a slight, lingering melancholy quality to it. English is not an easy language to set to music or to sing, but Sandy has this way of singing American English with its peculiar rhythms and making it sound utterly natural and beautiful to the ear.”

Sylvan cites singing Bach cantatas amid the swirl of the late-’70s early music boom in Boston--where he still lives--as one of the formative experiences of his artistic life. Yet he also cites extramusical endeavors that have earned his career the tag of “unconventional.”

While Sylvan dismisses the myth of the “conventional” career, he’s long happily resided off the beaten path. Not only is he based outside New York, but in 1980 he took a hiatus from singing to take up a spiritual retreat at Findhorn, a farming community in Scotland.

“If you look at the 10 or so singers who are working now, I don’t know that any of them has taken the so-called traditional path,” Sylvan says. “Is there such a thing as the traditional route? The music business might have us believe there is, but I don’t think there is.”

When Sylvan returned from Findhorn, he hooked up with pianist Breitman, forming a partnership that continues today. The Schubert song cycle that the two will perform this week has become, in Sylvan’s words, “a centerpiece of our lives as musicians.”

For Breitman, the Schubert--as well as his partnership with Sylvan in general--has fed his work as an instrumentalist.

“I used to play with instrumentalists of all kinds, but I had never looked for a singer as a collaborator,” Breitman recalls of the beginnings of his 12-year association with Sylvan. “Usually people who work with singers (come from) a whole other background.”

An artistic rapport, however, bound the singer and the pianist.

“From the time we first read through together, it was clear to both of us that this was an important thing to hold onto,” Breitman says, noting that the two have worked together more in recent years. “We became friends afterward.”

Breitman points to the ways in which Sylvan’s interpretive skills have nurtured his own understanding of Schubert and others. “(Sylvan) is so attuned to the words and the poetry,” the pianist says.

“For me as an instrumentalist, that opens up a whole other dimension that we usually don’t get to participate in. I’m sure (the experience) has percolated into my instrumental work too.”

As befits a musician only in his late 30s with a burgeoning career, Sylvan is optimistic about changes afoot in the music world. For one, there’s a new eclecticism that’s a far cry from the narrow focus of two decades ago.

“In the ‘70s in New York City, music concerts were narrowly defined in taste, toward atonal serial music,” he says. “There was an enormous complicity among writers, critics and musical figures--people were interested in retaining some kind of status quo. I sensed a fear of intellectual depreciation that was strong and clear in that period.”

Now, on the other hand, even the bastions of so-called high culture are letting in new players--perhaps because they have to if they don’t want to fall victim to an aging or otherwise diminishing patron base.

“Opera is encompassing the range between the (success of) John Corigliano’s (“Ghosts of Versailles”) at the Met and the incredible life of performance art,” Sylvan says. “Composers, writers and companies are trying everything. It seems to be a fertile time.”

The Metropolitan Opera’s staging of “The Ghosts of Versailles”-- the first time that august venue had premiered an American opera in more than two decades--was a watershed, in Sylvan’s estimation.

“There’s been an enormous discussion about the entire event,” he says. “It must be said that the Met made a smash hit out of a new American opera. The landmark for me is that it sold out houses.”

That degree of commercial success could inspire other companies to make such ventures. “It does trickle down,” Sylvan says. “It will convince a smaller company to also take a chance.”

Any such trailblazing, though, has to come in the context of a continuing recession that has dealt heavy blows to much of the performing arts. “With lots of things drying up, there are a lot of gifted people who are not working a lot,” Sylvan says. “It forces us to be more creative about routes.”

Which means “unconventional” career paths like Sylvan’s are more and more the norm.

“I do think a trend has begun to happen: New York has become less important,” he says. “A lot of singers don’t live there. I think it’s a good thing.

“People need to understand that within their own communities they can find richness and diversity. More communities could stand to not always look to the imports from New York. Because of economics, that’s beginning to happen.”

The result, Sylvan argues, will be a new emphasis on the cultivation of local talent. Small and mid-size orchestras will be less enthusiastic about shelling out an imposing chunk of change for a one-night appearance by a name, and more likely to hire singers from closer to home.

Similarly, Sylvan sees production sharing among opera companies as another positive consequence of hard times. “It’s a much more democratic way of looking at a new piece of art,” he says.

With the Adams operas, for example, that kind of sharing rankled key established forces. “One of the things that angered the critics is that with ‘Nixon’ and ‘Klinghoffer’ we were going to play 10 cities no matter what they said. Any new work needs to be heard,” Sylvan says.

Still, even though there are more opportunities for artists and audiences, the ways of the music business worry Sylvan.

“I would like to see a turn away from the winner-take-all syndrome,” he says with characteristic generosity toward his peers. “Maybe that’s just what comes of industry. But my hope is that we step away from fear and embrace as much as we can because there’s a lot out there.”